Community Practice

Many independent and small chain pharmacies nationwide are seeing flexible spending account transactions declined, pushing patients out of independent pharmacies and into chains.

'Tis the seasons for coughs, colds, and sore throats. Americans are expected to spend $3.6 billion this season on OTC remedies, 1.7% more than last year. The upsurge is attributed to media exposure of swine flu and a tough economy that has more consumers trying OTC remedies before they see their doctors.

Pharmacies are the new convenience stores when it comes to pharmacy robbery. Hawaii pharmacist and inventor Patrick Adams has responded to the increase in pharmacy crimes with PharmaSafe, a dispensing cabinet built into a timer safe.

After settling a lawsuit with the State of New York over the sale of expired products, CVS is involved in a similar suit initiated by the State of Connecticut.

Overweight and obese people constitute a majority in the United States. Universal access to healthcare will mean fat people, too. Thousands of obese people, uninsurable today, will get full coverage, and expensive prescriptions for obesity-related illnesses will clog the tube.

FDA has announced that concomitant use of omeprazole (Prilosec, AstraZeneca, and Prilosec OTC, Procter & Gamble) and clopidogrel (Plavix, Sanofi Aventis/Bristol-Myers Squibb) can reduce the anti-clotting effectiveness of clopidogrel.

Financial adviser Rick Schultenover discusses ways pharmacists can protect their financial futures.

When pharmacies are planning their quality assurance or continuous quality improvement plans, they need to determine whether their goals are strictly conformity with state and federal requirements, or something more.

Omnicell's new mobile medication dispensing system features a 12-drawer locked cart with two-dimensional bar-code capabilities for patient identification and medication administration.

A survey of new Rx, new generics, new indications, and new OTC

A successful pharmacy practice rests on customer service, patient care, and career satisfaction. This story illustrates all three.

The DeLoitte Center for Health Solutions has released a study projecting a slow-down in growth of retail pharmacy clinics across the United States in the next two years.

Categories to watch in this year's diverse drug pipeline include oral agents to treat multiple sclerosis and a host of new diabetes, cardiovascular, and pain-management products.

A cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial carried out in six community-based family medicines has demonstrated that healthcare teams that included pharmacists helped improve patients' blood-pressure management.

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.

One man's fantasy of the ultimate pharmacy leads him down memory lane.

Doctors don't do it. Attorneys don't do it. Physical therapists, insurance agents, title agents, audiologist, and nurse practitioners don't do it. Who came up with the fishbowl model of retail pharmacy anyway?

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).

A survey of new Rx, new indications, and new OTC

Community Health Care, a center in Bridgeton, New Jersey, serving 43,000 uninsured and underinsured patients at 18 sites across the state, is teaming up with SunRx to expand its pharmacy services to include more 340B program patients.

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.

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has announced results of a clinical trial comparing alemtuzumab and antithymocyte globulin, agents used in induction before renal and pancreatic transplants.

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.

Pharmacists speak out about stress-busting, generics, business costs, and mail-order pharmacy

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.

The retail pharmacist who runs a pharmacy inside a big-box store can improve departmental operations by understanding the point of view of the retail store manager. Although pharmacist and manager have different focuses and priorities, they can work together to improve delivery of services when they understand each other's needs.

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.

More than 23 million Americans, close to 8 percent of the population, have diabetes. For drugstores, the medical nature of their retail business makes them the outlet of choice for shoppers purchasing diabetes products. Retail pharmacists may choose to maximize patient awareness by placing their diabetes-care display and educational literature near the pharmacy counter.

Nearly a third of all Americans have trouble getting a good night's sleep. Although customers seeking OTC help this year will have to rely on the old stand-by, antihistamines, a few new products are available.

Confronted with these three common scenarios in your daily practice of pharmacy, what would you do?