Medicines
A US government report has found that three of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) “hiked costs” of “lifesaving drugs” including cancer and HIV treatments by “thousands of percent” between 2017 and 2022.
A coroner has warned that the lack of “communication between primary and secondary care” may lead to the “early death” of more patients, after an NHS trust was not made aware of a pharmacy’s warning.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has claimed that Boots’ parent company “systematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly”, despite clear “red flags” and patient deaths.
A study of over half-a-million over-65s has found links between repeatedly taking paracetamol and complications including gastrointestinal bleeding and heart failure.
Multinational e-commerce company eBay worked “closely” with the MHRA last year to block almost two million unregulated medicine “violations” before they were sold to the public, C+D has learned.
A toddler with a Strep A infection was given antibiotics too late after a pharmacist could not issue alternative medication during shortages due to restrictions, a coroner has found.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to review the ongoing issue of pharmacies dispensing at a loss after the topic was raised at PMQs last week, when one MP stated that a local contractor had been “forced to pay over 100 times more” for certain medications.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has flagged the potential for AI to be used in Pharmacy First and has stressed that healthcare regulation “must not stifle” AI innovation.
CPE has said that while it is “positive” that the government has “partially” accepted the majority of recommendations in the health and social care committee’s (HSCC) pharmacy report, there are still “some significant disappointments”.
A Doncaster pharmacy worker has been “rumbled” after she created a “false identity” to speak to a prison inmate and steal medication.