Practice Tips

IVYLAND, Pa. — It’s essential for healthcare professionals to follow the five tenets of medication dispensing and administration: the right patient, the right drug, the right dose, the right route and the right time. Within every facility, systems are instituted to ensure these five tenets are observed. Bar codes can play an important role in medication dispensing, helping healthcare professionals ensure they are administering drugs to the right patients correctly. But many people don’t know how bar codes work, or which bar code options are best for their systems.

While an insurance card contains a lot of information and is an important part of the pharmacy transaction, there are times when it doesn’t tell the whole story.

The insurance card indicates only the current plan covering the patient. What it cannot tell the pharmacist is whether or not there is additional coverage, or what specific type of coverage the patient has. Even when the pharmacy sends the claim to be adjudicated by the plan, the messaging returned does not indicate if the coverage is for a commercial or government plan, such as Managed Medicaid.

BOCA RATON, Fla. — IM HealthScience on Thursday announced favorable results from its Functional Dyspepsia Safety Update at 12 months, a real-world, post-marketing surveillance study reporting on the safety and tolerability profile of FDgard among an estimated 392,554 patients who used the product.

Cancer patients of reproductive age are not being provided with fertility information and referrals for fertility preservation, according to a new report published in Wiley’s Psycho-Oncology.

WASHINGTON — The American Pharmacists Association on Thursday announced a new Leadership360 Institute that provides pharmacists with opportunities to reach full leadership potential while developing management skills necessary across pharmacy settings.

Institute participants can take part in any or all of the three Leadership tracks including: Lead360, Mentor360, and Manage360. Each track will offer programs to help pharmacists excel in their individual growth, purposeful development and interactions with others.

At RBC 2017, Cardinal Health launched a new program that minimizes the complexities for a retail independent pharmacy to establish a CLIA-waived flu and strep testing service for their patients. The launch of such a service further emphasizes the emerging trend of direct patient-care services being offered in community pharmacy and the consumer-driven demand of accessing convenient healthcare services. For certain screenings, patients will no longer have to make a doctor’s appointment or schedule a visit with their local urgent care clinics.

WASHINGTON — PantheRx Specialty Pharmacy, a Pennsylvania-based pharmacy with a focus on rare diseases, has received specialty pharmacy practice accreditation from the Center for Pharmacy Practice Accreditation, the organization announced Monday.