Content about Medical terms

In early March, more than 30,000 healthcare industry participants swarmed upon New Orleans for the annual HIMSS conference. In the words of keynote speaker James Carville, this is the Super Bowl of conventions. Most attendees arrived on Sunday to discover a water outage warning. Even when the water pressure returned to normal, the message was clear — do not drink it! On Monday morning, there was not a latte to be found in the entire city. We were roughing it…

WASHINGTON — The National Consumers League and its partners on Thursday announced the awardees of the second annual Script Your Future Medication Adherence Team Challenge for health profession students. This month-long competition engaged health profession students and faculty in developing creative ideas for raising awareness about medication adherence as a critical public health issue. This year's awardees are: St. Louis College of Pharmacy, University of Charleston School of Pharmacy, University of the Pacific Thomas J.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The National Association of Chain Drug Stores has announced its membership in “Prescriptions for a Healthy America: A Partnership for Advancing Medication Adherence."

ORLANDO, Fla. — Unnecessary spending related to medications totaled nearly half a trillion dollars last year, and much of that was in the poorest states in the country, according to pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts.

ESI said the country wasted $418 billion on bad medication-related decisions, including $55.8 billion spent on higher-priced medications when cheaper alternatives were available; and $269.4 billion went to expenses related to poor medication adherence.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Results of a survey indicate a positive response among patients to redesigned patient medication information distributed to patients at retail pharmacy chains in two states as part of an eight-week program.

Catalina Health said it launched the eight-week quality improvement initiative in August 2012 to disseminate the information focusing on three medications dispensed in stores in an unnamed "leading pharmacy chain" in California and Michigan.

Retail clinic operator Take Care Clinics, which is owned by Walgreens, is expanding the scope of services within its 300-plus clinics to include management for such chronic conditions as hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and asthma, as well as additional preventive health services.

WASHINGTON — A new Medicare Chronic Conditions Dashboard announced today by Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), furthers the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s goals for health promotion and the prevention and management of multiple chronic conditions.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — Patients with coronary artery disease who are adherent to their prescribed medications can save the healthcare system up to $868 per patient per year, according the findings of a recent study conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and CVS Caremark.
 
The research was published in the April issue of the American Journal of Medicine.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Pat Roberts, R-Kan. and Kay Hagan, D-N.C. on Thursday introduced legislation written to lower healthcare costs by helping more seniors better manage their prescriptions. The Medication Therapy Management Empowerment Act will allow seniors with any high-cost chronic illness to review all their medication and develop a plan of action with a pharmacist.

An oft-cited 1998 report, recently repeated again by the surgeon general in the January/ February 2012 "Public Health Report," estimated that 125,000 U.S. citizens die each year due to complications related to adherence. Also worrisome is the statistic that one-third to one-half of all patients don't take medication as prescribed, and according to a 2011 study by Harvard, Brigham and Women's Hospital and CVS, up to one-quarter of these never fill prescriptions at all.

WASHINGTON — Employers that use multiple cost-management programs have a 50% lower specialty drug trend than those that don't use them, according to a new study by pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts.

The study, presented Thursday at the National Business Group on Health's Business Health Agenda 2013 conference in Washington, was described as one of the first to examine the effect of multiple utilization management programs on the cost of specialty medications, which is expected to account for $1 out of every $4 spent on prescription drugs by 2014.

LANSING, Mich. — The federal government has recognized the state of Michigan as a national leader in electronic prescribing, a group of health organizations in the state said.

The Michigan Health Information Network said that the Office of the National Coordinator for health information technology had commended it, recognizing that 94% of pharmacies in the state are equipped for e-prescribing.