pharmacies

Federal investigators are calling for the state of Missouri to pay back at least $8 million in Medicaid funding, arguing that the state's provider tax doesn't follow federal law. The state, which has been fighting with the feds since last year, imposes a tax on hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies and healthcare management firms that generates about $1.1 billion per year. The state has leveraged that money to pull in $1.8 billion in Medicaid money from the federal government. The feds are …

Happy with the progress of its initial efforts, Sutter Health is expanding its $2 million retail clinic rollout. The Sacramento, CA-based health system runs six clinics in northern California, all based in Rite Aid pharmacies, and should add several more through 2008. (Rite Aid, for its part, is also happy with the retail clinic concept; it's looking for more health system partners who are willing to create in-store clinics.) Malpractice and liability insurance costs have been a bit …

> A judge has approved a settlement in a lawsuit challenging the charity care policies of Portland, OR-based legacy Health System. Article

> Nevada pharmacies may soon have to submit their prices on 100 most commonly prescribed drugs to the state Board of Pharmacy. Article

> State …

Wal-Mart's $4 generics juggernaut just keeps on rolling. Wal-Mart announced today that it would roll out its $4 generics program to 11 more states, bringing the total to 38, while adding 17 more generics to the program. The retail giant has added Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Washington and West Virginia to the list of states …

Clinical information may still be confidential, but what you think is competitive business information might be public property. In Connecticut, four managed care organizations are fighting--so far unsuccessfully--to keep details of their state Medicaid contracts out of the realm of the Freedom of Information Act. Healthcare advocates want to get the organizations' preferred drug lists, after Medicaid recipients said they were going home from pharmacies empty-handed because of the …

A new law goes into effect in Washington state that makes it illegal for pharmacies to fill any prescription that is not either printed, typewritten or electronically generated. The legislation is an attempt to combat the tradition of barely legible physician handwriting on paper prescriptions, which critics say can cause preventable medication errors.

- read this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The trade group America's Health Insurance Plans released a study reporting that most hospitals, doctors and pharmacies are now sending claims to insurers electronically. According to the group, 74 percent of claims are now electronic, up sharply from 43 percent a decade ago. According to the New York Times, the trend "reflects the growing role of companies specializing in claims processing." The release of the AHIP study comes just after yesterday's mammoth Athenahealth …

Pharmacists and insurers groups clashed in Washington over payment for Medicare Part D claims. Critics say many of the companies that offer drug plans under the new benefit are taking too long to resolve claims, putting financial pressure on pharmacies. Administration officials had initally argued that the numbers showed that insurers were making payments within 21-25 days. On Wednesday, a CMS spokesman admitted that the agency has no data backing that claim.

- see this article from The Hill

SureScripts, the ePrescribing network owned by the large pharmacy chains, announced that it will be providing medication history and patient formulary and eligibility information later in the year. SureScripts will use technology from Initiate software, a vendor of enterprise master patient index software, which will integrate information from the various pharmacies on the network. SureScripts is important for ePrescribing's advance as it gives a network for application vendors to "plug …

A computer glitch is causing some people who sign up for Medicare Part D plans to be involuntarily enrolled in more than one plan at once. According to CMS officials, a processing error is making it difficult for people who enrolled in one plan to switch to another. People who have been automatically enrolled in a government plan, for example, are often having problems when they try to move to a plan of their choice. The glitch is causing confusion at pharmacies when customers go to pick …