Practice Transformation
Research identifying the key components of CMM practice implementation has been lacking, until now. A paper published earlier this month in the Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy outlined the 13 essential elements that can be used to guide CMM practice implementation, development and advancement. Among them are leadership support, billing and revenue systems, methods for identifying patients in need of CMM, scheduling CMM services, care documentation, presence and scope of collaborative practice agreements, interprofessional collaboration, engagement of support staff and practitioner training. (Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy) What is CMM?
CMS Administrator Seema Verma says the administration wants to move forward on a value-based pricing approach to pharmaceuticals, noting that drugs represent one of the fastest-growing costs for CMS. “We’re seeing price tags of 1 million to 2 million dollars; that’s not sustainable,” she said at the TIME 100 Health Summit. “We want to encourage innovation, but that doesn’t mean anything if people can’t access the medications.” However, she dismissed the notion of giving Medicare negotiating power over drug prices. (FierceHealthcare)
Evidence & Innovation
Implementation of a pharmacogenomics course at West Virginia University School of Pharmacy was effective and well received by the students, according to a paper published in American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. Pharmacists are increasingly recognized as leaders in pharmacogenomics, the authors note. So the ultimate goals when designing this course were not only to better prepare pharmacy students to explain and interpret test results, but also to prepare them to help patients, explain the meaning of specific genetic backgrounds; and to educate them in the area of pharmacogenetics. (American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education)
Precision medicine is opening new possibilities for treatment, but what happens when they are customized to a single patient? Milasen, a new drug created to treat just one patient—a little girl named Mila—has “pushed the bounds of personalized medicine and has raised unexplored regulatory and ethical questions,” Gina Kolata writes in the New York Times. The researchers note that this “experience indicates that antisense oligonucleotides may deserve consideration as a platform for the rapid delivery of individualized treatments.” (New York Times; New England Journal of Medicine)
Policy Solutions
The FDA has, in recent years, tried to increase the number of generic drug approvals. However, research, published in JAMA Network Open, found that the number of generic approvals has been relatively steady and “there have not yet been noticeable effects of the FDA’s initiatives to expand approvals for generic drugs at risk for price spikes and shortages.” The researchers note that abbreviated new drug applications take time to prepare and review. “Nevertheless, continued attention is needed to foster approval of generic drugs with limited competition and prior shortage.” (JAMA Network Open; Becker’s Hospital Review)
How many patients suffer morbidity and mortality due to non-optimized medication therapy? How can physicians and pharmacists better coordinate medication-based care? GTMRx president and co-founder Terry McInnis, MD, MPH, tackles these and other topics important to physicians in her interview with Minnesota Physician. Her full interview is available in the October issue. (Minnesota Physician)
Join us for our next webinar! Interoperability Forecast: Opportunities & Solutions for Comprehensive Medication Management
October 29 at 1 p.m. eastern
The empowered consumer has personalized data that is meaningful to them at every point in their health care journey. Nearly three years after the signing of The 21st Century Cures Act, multiple government and industry-led initiatives are underway to deliver on that vision—at scale.
Join us for a webinar to make sense of where we are and where we’re going with our ability to get the right data at the right time to help patients and their care teams get the medications right.
Presented by:
- Deb Gage, MBA, President and CEO at Medecision, GTMRx Institute Board Member
- Ryan Howells, M.H.A., PMP, Principal at Leavitt Partners, Lead at the CARIN Alliance
- Lisa Bari, MBA, MPH, Consultant, former Health IT and Interoperability lead at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center
