Steve Anthony: True Canadian Pharmacy

I think this story perhaps explains in part why drug costs are outpacing other aspects of medical care.
Chuck Stauffer’s insurance covered the surgery to remove his brain tumor. It covered his brain scans. And it would have paid fully for tens of thousands of dollars of intravenous chemotherapy at a doctor’s office or hospital.
But his insurance covered hardly any of the cost of the cancer pills the doctor prescribed for him to take (more…)

A push by Medicare and other insurers to control patients’ misuse of medications as a way to cut unnecessary drug costs has given many pharmacists a chance to make additional money by getting paid for in-depth consultations or other extra services.
Kroger, for instance, is training more pharmacists to handle up to one-hour consultations with patients that it began offering members of sponsoring health plans two years ago. As profit margins shrink, (more…)

It was a robbery with a big surprise for the robber. A gunman walked into a CVS drugstore expecting to hold up the place. What he didn’t expect was to find a pharmacist who had a gun and was not afraid to use it.
The shooting happened just after midnight at the CVS on Walton Way and 15th Street.
Investigators say this isn’t the first time CVS has been robbed, but this time was different. A pharmacist fired at the suspect, protecting himself and (more…)

“Pharm parties” where party-goers ingest random prescription drugs collected from family medicine cabinets without regard for potentially lethal drug interactions are a rapidly increasing trend among teens and young adults, a pharmacist told a town hall audience Monday in Carrollton, Ky.
Pharmacist Dave Sallengs likened the possible deadly consequences of mixing prescription medication to the death Jan. 22, 2008, of Academy Award-winning actor Heath (more…)

The pharmacist at TOP Food and Drug in suburban Edmonds seemed like an excellent employee.
Friendly and helpful to the customers, he even ran a collection drive, asking people to bring back any unused prescriptions so he could donate the medicine to Third World countries.
Instead, he put much of that medicine back in the pharmacy’s supply – even if its expiration date had passed – thus improving the store’s profits while masking that he was also (more…)

North Dakota pharmacists and defenders of the state’s small towns came out on top Friday in the biggest battle of the 2009 Legislature.
The House soundly defeated a proposed repeal of the state’s 40-year-old law that requires pharmacies in the state be majority-owned by a pharmacist. House Bill 1440 went down on a 57-35 vote after an hour-long debate that at times got emotional.
“Trust the people of North Dakota,” said (more…)

North Dakotans packed an auditorium on the state Capitol grounds Tuesday to debate a state law requiring pharmacies to have pharmacists as their majority owners. The law is under heavy fire from large retailers who say that if it’s repealed, they can offer $4 prescriptions and lower drug costs.
North Dakota, where you can’t get a prescription filled at a Walgreens, is the only state with such a law, state officials say.
The National Conference (more…)

A turf war of sorts is brewing at the Capitol between doctors and pharmacists over who is qualified to decide when people need vaccinations.
The Arizona Pharmacy Alliance wants to allow its members to administer certain shots without the customers first getting a prescription from a doctor. Mindy Rasmussen, the organization’s director, said that change in law will help ensure that Arizonans get the immunizations they need.
But the move is (more…)

Medco’s Willingboro plant may be the largest pharmacy in the world. It is the size of six football fields, and it can fill more prescriptions in a day than an average corner drugstore does in a year.
Robotic arms instead of human hands pour pills into bottles and label them. Infrared scanners rather than human eyes check and recheck each bottle. The machines are 23 times more accurate than the average pharmacist, Medco says, thanks to technology (more…)