Technology

The American Pharmacists Association annual meeting opened in Washington just days before the big March vote on healthcare reform, and a number of people from the political realm were there to praise pharmacists and ask for their support.

Supermarket chains Albertsons and Harris Teeter have launched online tools to help shoppers pursue health and wellness.

As pharmacists search for ways to serve patients more effectively, technology is becoming increasingly important.

Technology now exists that can verify the contents of a drug vial or syringe, benefiting retailers, hospitals, and manufacturers.

Operational efficiences and economies of scale resulting from its 2008 merger with RxHub have enabled Surescripts to cut its pharmacy routing and transaction fees, which should lead to decreases in the prices independent pharmacies are paying.

Medication therapy management interventions by community pharmacists reduced prescription drug costs by $35 per month on average.

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.

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).

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.

A second round of revised quality standards for heparin became effective recently, the U.S. Pharmacopeial (USP) Convention has announced.

B. Braun Medical Inc. announced recently that it was named Surgery Center Market Supplier of the Year by McKesson's medical-surgical business unit. B. Braun received the award at McKesson's 2009 national sales meeting in Nashville, Tenn.

Tomorrow's pharmacists and pharmacies will need to find ways to increase profit margins by reducing the cost of prescribing, embracing technology, and focusing more on patient counseling, immunizations, education, and other offshoots of their clinical expertise.

Pharmacy in the 21st century will be more integrated into provision of health services than ever before. Electronic health records will become increasingly important, as will e-prescribing, prescription data, pharmacist intervention/counseling, and collaboration with other healthcare providers.

Orlando, Fla.? National health care reform and the growth of generic drugs were the top issues noted by McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical executives during this week's pharmacy strategies conference here.

All retail/community pharmacies assert that medication safety is their first priority. Here's an example of what one pharmacy chain is doing about it.

CVS, Merck, and Pfizer are just a few of the pharmaceutical heavyweights working together to electronically trace pharmaceutical products through the healthcare supply chain.

Novation, a healthcare contracting services company based in Texas, has contracted with McKesson Corp?s OneStop Generics Program for its mutual health system customers.

In a pilot telepharmacy project, the health center in Plainfield, Vt., is the site of an automated dispensing cabinet filling prescriptions sent in from five different rural health centers.

With violence against pharmacists mounting across the country, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) initiates a long-range study.

Pharmacies are being robbed across the country in increasing numbers. Many of these robberies involve controlled substances. New prevention approaches are needed.

Cleveland Clinic has joined forces with MinuteClinic to staff clinics inside several northeast Ohio CVS/pharmacy stores.

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) knows it would have more fighting power if it had an army of independent pharmacists and their customers behind it.

New index ranks hospital pharmacy performance

South Dakota pharmacists can now authorize, supervise, and verify prescriptions filled by pharmacy technicians in remote locations.

The health center at Middle Tennessee State University has opened a pharmacy with a drive-through window.

The slumping U.S economy and government regulations will cause pharmacy sales to grow only around 1.3 percent rate in 2009, according to new research presented last week at the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy?s Industry and Technology Issues in St. Petersburg, Fla.