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Medication therapy management (MTM) was the recurring theme at thisyear's Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) meeting, heldrecently in Seattle. The American Pharmacists Association led aworking group of 11 pharmacy organizations to define MTM servicesin 2004. This year, a similar working group led by AMCP defined MTMprograms. The resulting consensus document was presented at theAMCP meeting.

Increased customer satisfaction and Rx drug sales ... New pharmacy and supermarket customers ... Another way to differentiate yourself from the competition. These are some of the potential benefits of opening an in-store clinic. You may want to be the first on the block to provide that point of difference. If you don't do it, you may be at a competitive loss.

For the seventh consecutive year, pharmacists requested a recordnumber of licensure transfers last year, according to the NationalAssociation of Boards of Pharmacy.

When I think of the best job I ever had, I have vivid, pleasantmemories. There was pharmacist overlap-and that is the singlemost important criterion for a job to even get in the running forbest job. One of us came in at 9:00 a.m., and the other started hisshift at noon. We worked together for four hours. There was aconstant back-and-forth banter in the pharmacy. The techs jumpedinto the fun with both feet. We joked and laughed and kidded eachother. There were times when the topic of the day was not so funny.We stuck together when a tech needed to clear her head about animpending divorce. Once there was the stress of a child being hitby a car. For me, it was a second family.

Pharmacists who want to get involved at the grassroots level can contact the resources listed below.

The CDC now estimates that more than 70% of bacteria that causehospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of thedrugs most commonly used to treat them. With an antibiotic pipelinethat has been quite dry for some time, clinicians continue to worryabout how they'll treat patients who develop resistant infections.Given the unrelenting nature of bacteria to mutate in an effort tooutsmart even the most powerful antibiotics, creating newanti-infectives will always be required. Here are several drugs,currently under review by the FDA, that may soon offer us a fewmuch-needed options:

Daytrana should be applied once-daily and removed after a period ofnine hours from time of application.

The new Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA), pushed by the Centers forMedicare & Medicaid Services to develop measures of pharmacyquality, should be working toward some early proposals by late May,according its originators.

CMS has ruled that when Medicare Part D plans impose newrestrictions or eliminate a drug from their formularies, they mustcontinue coverage for the remainder of the year on anybeneficiaries who were already taking the medication.

Due to high demand for a replay, CMS has made available a recordingto its recent pharmacy open door forum on the Pharmacy QualityAlliance. The on-line audio of the telephone conference call can beaccessed at www.cms.gov/pharmacy.

Rhode Island has received the first-ever SafeRx Award for promotionand adoption of electronic prescribing. Nevada, Massachusetts,Maryland, Florida, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, andMichigan rounded out the top 10 e-prescribing states.

USP has announced a public comment and review period process forproposed changes to USP General Chapter 797 PharmaceuticalCompounding of Sterile Preparations. The public comment period willend on Aug 15. In addition, USP will host a series of six Webinarsdesigned to provide additional information on the proposedrevisions.

CMS has announced a proposed rule change to launch a competitivebidding program for durable medical equipment (DME) in 2007. CMScurrently pays for DME based on a listed price. Under the proposedchange, DME companies would submit bids to CMS.

Five trends will improve drug compliance in the next five to 10years. They include e-prescriptions, electronic healthcare records,standard messaging, RFID, and pay for performance.

CDC has confirmed that an aggressive fungal eye infectionassociated with contact lens use has now been found in 31 statesand may be affecting more than 200 people. U.S. health officialssaid 32 of 58 people with fungal infections used Bausch &Lomb's ReNu with MoistureLoc, which Bausch & Lomb voluntarilypulled from the market on April 10.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) announced itssupport of the introduction of the Dextromethorphan DistributionAct of 2006 (H.R. 5280).

The NACDS Foundation has donated $216,500 in scholarships to beshared by all 92 pharmacy schools. The awards ranged from $1,000 to$20,000. In a random drawing for the largest awards, $20,000 wentto Wayne State University, while Idaho State University and PalmBeach Atlantic University each received $10,000.

CMS has mandated that Part D drug plans allow 180 days for filingclaims incurred between Jan. 1 and June 30. Problems withcoordination of benefits have required the reversal of claims andrebilling to the appropriate payer. Since a lack of information ledpharmacies to sometimes bill the wrong payer, they should not beheld to the usual 30- to 90-day timely billing standard, CMSconcluded.

Cardinal Health's RFID pilot will attach tracking tags to thelabels of drugs at a facility in New Jersey. The drugs will then beshipped to a Philadelphia facility, which will encode an electronicproduct code standard data at the unit, case, and pallet levelduring the packaging process.

Due to high demand for a replay, CMS has made available a recordingto its recent pharmacy open door forum on the Pharmacy QualityAlliance. The on-line audio of the telephone conference call can beaccessed at www.cms.gov/pharmacy.

TestPak, a N.J.-based healthcare contract packager, announced itplans to acquire and install the first production equipment tosupport its launch of Stora Enso's Pharma SHR child-resistant andsenior-friendly packaging system. The installation is slated forthis month.

Walgreens is offering the following suggestions to help pharmacypatients in the event of a hurricane evacuation: evacuate to a safelocation and refill your medication at a pharmacy there; take awaterproof bag with your current medication, even if the bottle isempty-the information on the label will help the pharmacistrefill your medicine once you arrive at your destination; keep awritten record of your current prescriptions, dosage, and doctor'scontact information in your valuable papers file, especially if youare taking several Rx drugs. Walgreens patients can register atWalgreens.com and print out this information directly from theirpatient profile.

The maker of influenza drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) has releasedconsumer guidelines to help protect patients from purchasingcounterfeit products. Among other things, Roche recommends patientsuse caution when buying the drug on-line, be wary of offers to sellmedications without a valid prescription, and only purchase from alicensed pharmacy.

The FDA has issued an alert to both healthcare workers andconsumers following 21 reports of a type of renal failure known asacute phosphate nephropathy. The problems occurred following use ofthese oral sodium phosphate (OSP) products for bowel cleansingprior to a colonoscopy: Fleet Phospho-soda, Fleet Accu-Prep, andVisicol.

The FDA has given the nod to Solodyn, the first minocycline productapproved for once-daily dosing in the treatment of inflammatorylesions of non-nodular moderate to severe acne vulgaris.Manufacturer Medicis claims that Solodyn is not bioequivalent toany other minocycline product and is the only extended-releaseminocycline in tablet form.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA) unveiled findings from its new Drug Abuse Warning Network(DAWN) showing almost two million drug-related emergency departmentvisits in 2004. Of these, nearly 1.3 million ER visits wereassociated with drug misuse or abuse.

Patients eligible for but not yet enrolled in Medicare Part D cancontinue to receive medications through Eli Lilly's LillyAnswerspatient assistance program through the end of the year. To continueto receive the drugs, patients must have been enrolled inLillyAnswers as of last December.

Medicare beneficiaries who spend little on drugs would benefit fromPart D, according to a study conducted on behalf of Medicare Today,a partnership of 400 organizations representing seniors, healthcaregroups, and employers. Seniors who spend just $381 per year ondrugs would break even under Part D and out of 1,000 beneficiarieswho spend $381 or less, half can expect to see their costs increaseto an average of $730 this year.