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In an attempt to reduce medication errors and adverse drug events and to provide pharmacists with more time for patient counseling, health-system pharmacies are increasingly adopting health information technology, according to a first-of-its-kind survey by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP).

According to Sandra Leal, PharmD, CDE, clinical pharmacy supervisor, El Rio Health Center, Tucson, and president, American Association of Clinicians for the Underserved, also in Tucson, "We see patients who are leaving the ER and going to the pharmacy and then coming to us." She notes that many of these patients don't know how to self-manage their insulin and diabetes.

In this forum, Frank A. Federico, RPh, content director for the 5 Million Lives campaign being conducted by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened by asking the question: "What keeps you up at night when it comes to insulin safety?"

Pharmacists and healthcare organizations involved in the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)'s Patient Safety and Pharmacy Services Collaborative are already seeing positive results in reducing medication errors and reconciling medications, according to early outcomes presented on Sunday.

According to Stuart Levine, PharmD, an informatics specialist with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Horsham, Pennsylvania, although a hospital may not have a defined pediatric program, every hospital provides pediatric care. "If a child comes into your ER because of a car wreck, for example, you will be treating that child," Dr. Levine said.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) kicked off its 43rd annual midyear clinical meeting on Sunday with the announcement that the organization has received the 2008 Award for Excellence in Medication-Use Safety

The American Society of Consultant Pharmacists recently filed comments regarding implementation of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act Section 172

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently informed Part D plans they are suspending the current collection of long-term care rebate reports for 2008 and 2009, in lieu of a new reporting requirement that will be changed in 2010. Additionally, the agency plans to test the proposed reporting requirements with a small number of Part D sponsors prior to 2010.

Health Mart pharmacy network now represents 2,000 independently-owned pharmacies across the United States, the company recently announced. Since the Health Mart pharmacy network was re-launched in June 2006, the franchise?s membership has grown by more than 500 percent. The Health Mart franchise is owned and operated by McKesson Corp.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama selected Tom Daschle, a former senator, to be his health secretary.

The University of Dallas (UD) this month announced plans to open North Texas' first PharmD degree program.

Stent patients who take Plavix, a blood thinner, with certain heartburn drugs may face a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, and other dangerous events, according to a study released Tuesday.

Pharmacists remain in short supply across the country, particularly in rural areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With such a high demand, some retail and hospital pharmacies are offering signing bonuses and other incentives to recruit new pharmacists.

CVS Caremark Corp. recently announced that it successfully completed the subsequent offering period of its tender offer for all of the outstanding common stock of Longs Drug Stores Corp.

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) President and CEO Billy Tauzin today expressed his hope that the next head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can work with diverse constituents and improve the agency?s scientific bases.

New Orleans-Subjects without symptoms of heart disease who have microalbuminuria are more likely to have coronary artery calcium and are more likely to have progression of coronary artery calcium over time than those without microalbuminuria, says Andrew P. DeFilippis, MD.

New Orleans-A new type of stent coated with an antibody that binds circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) is associated with a low rate of stent thrombosis and requires only 1 month of dual antiplatelet therapy. Drug-eluting stents require at least 6 months of dual antiplatelet therapy to reduce the risk of stent thrombosis.

New Orleans-Early reperfusion is crucial to maintaining cardiac myocytes in patients suffering a heart attack yet many patients refuse to seek medical care until hours after symptom onset, if at all.

New Orleans-Mid-regional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) is a better biomarker for predicting short-term mortality in patients presenting with shortness of breath who are diagnosed with heart failure, according to results of the Biomarkers in the Assessment of Congestive Heart Failure (BACH) trial. Use of this marker was significantly more accurate than brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) or N-terminal prohormone BNP (NT-proBNP) in detecting which heart failure patients were likely to die.

New Orleans-The use of irbesartan for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) failed to improve outcomes compared to placebo, says Barry Massie, MD, investigator for the Irbesartan in Heart Failure with Preserved EF (I-PRESERVE) trial. These results are consistent with two previous trials (CHARM PRESERVED, PEP-CHF) that failed to show a positive effect with an angiotensin-receptor blocker (ARB) for these patients, explains Dr. Massie, University of California, San Francisco.

New Orleans-An aerobic exercise program modestly reduces death and hospitalization in patients with chronic heart failure, according to results from a study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

New Orleans-Obese children, particularly those with elevated triglycerides, have a “vascular age” similar to those of 45-year-old white men, says Geetha Raghuveer, MD, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. “I think this is a wake up call,” she says. “These children may need intensive management including pharmacological management of risk factors.

An investigational oral anticoagulant-the factor Xa inhibitor rivaroxaban-performed well enough in a Phase II study in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) to support a pivotal Phase III trial in patients with ACS, reports C. Michael Gibson, MD.

A patient on chronic warfarin is scheduled for a pacemaker implantation, so naturally you discontinue the warfarin several days prior to the procedure to reduce the chance of bleeding. That may not be necessary, says Peter H. Belott, MD, who contends that “we can keep the patient [at a] therapeutic INR [international normalized ratio] and will not incur any deleterious effects.”

Precisely defining intermediate cardiovascular-event risk using the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) is a challenge for clinicians. This is magnified when one considers that the number of patients who fall under the intermediate risk category outnumbers those considered low or high risk.

By itself, use of electronic health records (EHRs) does not improve the quality of care for heart failure, says Mary Norine Walsh, MD.

Drug-eluting stents (DES) were associated with decreased rates of death, myocardial infarction (MI), and revascularization at 3 years of follow up in diabetic patients compared to bare-metal stents (BMS), according to results of a large observational study. “Our primary concern was to look at safety,” says Laura Mauri, MD (pictured) Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. “Considering the safety concerns surrounding DES recently, it was to our surprise that we found a significant difference in the opposite direction.

Getting less than 7.5 hours of sleep daily is a predictor of incident cardiovascular disease in elderly patients with hypertension, reports Kazuo Eguchi, MD, Jichi Medical University, Tochigi, Japan. “Reflecting changing lifestyles, people are sleeping less in modern societies,” he says.