2012. A milestone in my professional career marking the 30th anniversary since I finished my medical oncology fellowship and started practicing in the field. Oncology is a much different place today than in the late 1970s when I was an […]
Read MoreWe have written about the Rx-360 (www.rx-360.org) group numerous times in the past; it’s a volunteer organization that started up within the pharma industry in 2009, in the aftermath of the heparin scandal. The originating idea was to get industry […]
Read MoreManaging the transportation and distribution of temperature-sensitive drug products has always been a top-down process, beginning with manufacturers evaluating how their supply chains work. Focus has been on qualifying appropriate packaging, transportation lanes and modes of transport. This approach then […]
Read MoreNew medicines are critical if the world’s population is going to live longer and healthier lives. In the past 10 years, more than 300 new medicines have been approved by FDA. [1] Because of these medicines, deaths from heart disease […]
Read MoreThird-party payers are increasingly dissatisfied with the buy-and-bill process for specialty pharmaceuticals covered under a patient’s medical benefit. In response, some pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are developing services that substitute a specialty pharmacy-to-provider channel for the currently dominant specialty distributor-to-provider […]
Read MoreObamacare, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed into law March 23, 2010. It’s now being challenged in the Supreme Court by the Department of Justice and 26 states on constitutional grounds, namely, that […]
Read MoreIf it weren’t for the fact that patients are suffering—even dying—because of drug shortages, the issues surrounding it would make an excellent MBA project for some enterprising student. As being reported in this issue and the recent past, the number […]
Read MoreReports from the American Hospital Association, American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, University of Michigan and the Premier healthcare alliance found that the vast majority of hospitals nationwide are experiencing life-threatening shortages of medicines needed to provide essential patient care. The […]
Read MoreYears ago, when the term “personalized medicine” starting being bandied about, I had a conversation with a experienced pharmaceutical researcher who pointed out that the economics of personalized medicine were all wrong for the biopharma industry. Manufacturers want to be […]
Read MoreThe news of the Express Scripts-Medco proposed merger hit the newswires just as two of the Big Three wholesalers—AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health—were holding their annual national meetings for independent pharmacies. We report on some of the aspects of this merger […]
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