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In another move to bolster its position with pharmacy self-service kiosks or ATM-like machines, Parata Systems has acquired Amistar and its Distributed Delivery Networks Corp.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association's (CHPA) educational foundation, the Consumer Health Education Center, has launched a national education campaign to help mature Americans better mange their health, specifically regarding the OTCs they use.

Bar-coding technology, high-speed networks, and Intranets were the top technologies that respondents to a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) survey said they intend to implement over the next two years.

According to a recent statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the low reimbursement rates from insurance companies to providers for the cost of providing vaccines to children is a risk to their health.

Voluntary nationwide consumer recall of all lots of the Glacier Mint and Bubble Blast flavors of Listerine Agent Cool Blue Plaque-Detecting Rinse.

RediClinicLLC has entered into a 50-50 partnership with Memorial Hermann, called RCMH LLC, for the operation of all RediClinics in the Greater Houston area.

Antipsychotic agents have long been integral to the management of schizophrenia. First-generation, "conventional" antipsychotics are high-affinity antagonists of dopamine D2 receptors. Although they are effective against antipsychotic symptoms, they are also associated with a high rate of neurologic adverse effects. Such effects include tardive dyskinesia and extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS).

As many as 100,000 patients die every year from hospital-acquired infections. It doesn't have to be that way. HAIs are eminently preventable. Tools exist that can significantly lower HAI mortality and morbidity rates and reduce an associated $6 billion in excess annual health costs.

The clinical success of an ongoing pay-for-performance (P4P) pilot project by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires extensive participation by health-system pharmacists.

Diabetes is a deadly, common and costly disease, so the debate about biogenerics is ardent when it concerns insulin. The drug is expensive and indispensable, and scientists agree that creating generic insulin is simpler than creating most other potential biologic equivalents.

A 70-year-old woman, T.R., has been transferred from an extended care nursing facility to your hospital with symptoms of fever, dyspnea with respiratory difficulty, cough, and sputum production. Her current medications include methadone 200 mg/ day (pain syndrome), risperidone (Risperdal, Janssen) 2 mg twice daily, digoxin 0.125 mg daily, and furosemide 20 mg twice daily.

The 2007 Polyanalgesic Consensus Panel recently recommended major changes to the guidelines for treatment, via intraspinal infusion, of patients suffering from severe chronic pain.

New warnings the Food & Drug Administration has issued about erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) have prompted many practitioners to change the way they practice, while others remain unconvinced.

In the early 1990s, when Health Mart was owned by regional wholesale distributor FoxMeyer, it was little more than a franchise tallying 800 stores. Now it is a pharmacy franchise logging 1,280 stores. The chain has experienced nearly a 400% growth rate over the past 10 months.

Given in combination with capecitabine (Xeloda, Roche), lapatinib (Tykerb, GlaxoSmithKline) has been approved for treating advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

These are the top 200 brand and generic drugs by wholesale acquisition cost (WAS) dollars used in hospitals last year. The data were provided by Wolters Kluwer Health, Pharmaceutical Audit Suite (PHAST), January to December 2006.

The Council for Quality Respiratory Care (CQRC), a coalition of the 11 leading home oxygen therapy providers and manufacturers, has expressed concern regarding CMS' final rule on competitive bidding.