Legal News

The House Small Business Committee has passed the Small Business Health Information Technology Financing Act, which could provide up to $10 million in loans to help pharmacies implement HIT. The act is now slated for vote by the full House of Representatives.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law on February 17, included the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which expands covered-entity and business-associate requirements established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

RxPatrol, an information clearinghouse operated by Purdue Pharma, has teamed up with the National Community Pharmacists Association to offer a 10-minute training video on crime-prevention measures for pharmacy staff.

Respondents to this year's business outlook survey are generally upbeat about the business their pharmacies are doing and their prospects for the coming year.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services are going after perpetrators of medical identity theft as part of a broader effort to reform healthcare.

Retail pharmacy managers are discovering that many third-party administrators do not agree that their inventory information approval systems meet compliance requirements set by the Internal Revenue Service for customers' use of flexible spending accounts.

Working with healthcare professionals and the public, the FDA is developing new guidelines for prevention of medication misuse and abuse and other medication errors linked to preventable harm.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) may recommend that healthcare workers, including pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, be transferred from positions where they handle hazardous drugs if the workers are trying to conceive, are pregnant, and/or breastfeeding.

In the prescription drug market, discriminatory pricing is common for independent community pharmacies and their patients. This fall, a Federal District Court in New York will consider a critical case: Drug Mart Pharmacy Corp. et a. v. American Home Products Corp. et al. The outcome of the case may determine whether discriminatory pricing techniques are illegal.

Hospitals and health systems have taken the lead in expanding the role of pharmacy technicians. "The better educated techs are, the more they can support pharmacists," says Mary Mohr, RPh, MS, of Clarian Health.

The FDA can require risk evaluation and mitigation strategies for certain prescription drugs and biological products, to ensure that the benefits of such products outweigh the risks. The effect of REMS ripples down through the supply chain to affect how pharmacies dispense medication.

When manufacture of biogenerics is a legal reality, brand manufacturers will still retain a strong market share for several years.

The FDA has announced the availability of the first draft guidance for industry on Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies.

Pharmacy groups have filed three lawsuits that argue that California, New York, and Washington have not met their legal requirements to assure Medicaid patients receive access and quality care at least equal to patients in the general public.

Controversy is in the mix after two mail-order prescription surveys with conflicting results were released within two days of each other.

A coalition of healthcare industry groups has sent a letter to the bipartisan leadership in Congress seeking to delay pending Medicaid cuts.

The Joint Commission is targeting patient safety failures with a new program that will directly affect pharmacy operations.

GlaxoSmithKline has announced that the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted that clinical data support both the efficacy and safety of Cervarix, the company's candidate cervical cancer vaccine.

Manufacturers, promoters, and sellers of dietary supplements are prohibited by law from making claims to treat or cure illness or disease, or their symptoms. Pharmacists should encourage patients to check with medical professionals before commencing use of any dietary supplement.

With the settlement of the class-action lawsuit brought against First DataBank and McKesson by third-party payors accusing the companies of conspiring to inflate average wholesale prices (AWP) of hundreds of drugs, AWP values will roll back from 1.25 to 1.20 times the drugs' wholesale acquisition cost (WAC).

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy is now one step closer to making its recommendation to the state?s legislature regarding the use of medical marijuana in the state.

The West Virginia Attorney General's Office has filed a lawsuit alleging that CVS Pharmacy, Kmart, Kroger, Walgreen Pharmacy, and Target violated a state law designed to promote use of generic equivalents for brand-name prescription drugs, according to media reports in the state.

In what it describes as an effort to stabilize and possibly decrease costs, a significant portion of which are associated with enforcement of laws and regulations, the Virginia Board of Pharmacy is testing new processes to help increase the efficiency of certain noncompliance issues.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy will convene a two-day task force Oct. 28 and October 29 to research various prescription-drug monitoring programs and recommend standards or model rules.

GlaxoSmithKline has announced that two lots of Advair Diskus medication were stolen earlier this month from the company's distribution facility near Richmond, Virginia.

The program created to provide Medicare recipients with prescription drug benefits exceeded expectations during its first two years. Keep reading to learn the details.

Keep reading to learn about some legal roadblocks in the way of pharmacy technicians.

The Pharmacists Society of the State of New York is fighting mad over the state's plan to contract with mail-order pharmacies to deliver high-cost medications to Medicaid customers.