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The Partnership for Safe Medicines, a group of organizations and individuals dedicated to protecting consumers from counterfeit medicines, issued the following statement regarding recent reports released by LegitScript, an online pharmacy verification service, and KnujOn,an Internet compliance company, which found that 80 to 90 percent of search engine-sponsored advertisements of online drug pharmacies violate federal and state laws, including selling substandard or counterfeit drugs to unsuspecting consumers.
Read MoreThe Indian government has finally improved their laws to address this important public health issue. While these new laws took five years before enactment, on August 10, India’s Ministry for Health & Family Welfare began enforcing the Drugs and Cosmetics (Amendment) Act of 2008.
Read MoreThird incident of stolen asthma inhalers in two months stems from a truck theft on September 8, 2009 in Florida.
Read MoreLast month, the Wall Street Journal featured an article that discussed the efforts currently underway to deter people from buying counterfeit products. It pointed out that many anti-counterfeiting messages fail to address the underlying motivation which leads people to buy counterfeit products.
Read MoreAn upcoming BBC series entitled "Fake Britain" will demonstrate how easy it is for patients to be tricked by unscrupulous pharmaceutical vendors online. The series, part of the BBC's "Fake Britain" week, focuses on counterfeit products of all types. In the series the chair of the European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines, Jim Thomson, is filmed purchasing prescription-only pharmaceuticals…
Read MoreWith talks about drug importation continuing in Congress, drug importation supporters argue that if the United States allows importation only from “safe countries,” such as Canada and the United Kingdom, than most of drug safety concerns would be eliminated. However, when it comes to drug importation, there is no such thing as a “safe” country.
Read MoreOur recent roundtable discussion post, “Why Steal A Truck Full Of Drugs” generated a lot of attention for this usually obscure policy issue. One reader who is a veteran colleague of drug diversion enforcement, Carlos M. Aquino at PharmaDiversion, LLC, wrote: I just read, “Why Steal a Truck Full of Drugs?” and I have to remind all that selling stolen…
Read MoreAbstract. PURPOSE Reducing inappropriate use of antibiotics is key to many antibiotic resistance initiatives. Most initiatives, however, focus almost exclusively on controlling prescribing by health care clinicians and do not focus on patient self-medication. The purpose of this study was to examine antibiotics available to patients without a prescription, a phenomenon on the Internet. METHODS We conducted an Internet search…
Read MoreAbstract. OBJECTIVES: To describe dual eligibles’ claims before and after Medicare Part D and to evaluate the effect that Medicare Part D has had on the claim percent gross margin (CPGM) earned by Texas community independent pharmacies.
DESIGN: Nonexperimental time series study.
SETTING: Texas, October 2005 through September 2006.
PARTICIPANTS: 313 community independent pharmacies.
INTERVENTION: Review of more than 150,000 Medicaid and 300,000 Medicare Part D claims acquired from a drug claims processor.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: CPGM per prescription claim before and after the implementation of Medicare Part D, controlling for generic/brand drug status.
RESULTS: The mean CPGM for prescriptions dispensed before Part D (Medicaid claims) was 26.7%. The mean CPGM for claims dispensed after Part D (Medicare claims) was 17.0% (using ingredient costs in 2006 dollars) or 20.4% (using ingredient costs adjusted to 2005 dollars), a reduction of 36.3% and 23.6%, respectively. Under both Medicaid and Part D, pharmacies earned higher margins for generic drugs (39.9% and 29.5%, respectively) than for brand-name drugs (8.7% and 8.3%, respectively).
CONCLUSION: These results support community pharmacy assertions of lower reimbursements from Part D payers compared with Medicaid payers. Based on these results, pharmacies can respond to this evolving environment by carefully reviewing their Part D plans’ impact on CPGM and taking available steps to increase the proportion of generic drugs dispensed to Medicare beneficiaries.
Read MoreView larger map What: The National Bureau of Investigation in the Philippines caught a former medical sales representative selling fake Vaxigrip – a flu vaccine – throughout the country. When: July 28, 2009 Where: The Philippines, including the cities of Manila and Makati, as well as the Laguna province. Who: Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi-Aventis Group Additional details: According to ABS-CBN News,…
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