Hep A in Cartersville

Have you eaten in Willy’s Mexicana Grill in Cartersville lately? You might want to get a hep A test… and maybe tell your patients as well.

Walmart makes staff cuts

Walmart is laying off up to 40 percent (!) of its senior pharmacists — what the company calls “aligning our staffing with the demands of the business.”

HPV vaccine through age 45

Although the human papillomavirus vaccine has been recommended for preteen girls and boys to protect against various cancers, a new recommendation out of the CDC says people up to age 45 could benefit from it.

And, like just about every other vaccine, the HPV vaccine turns out to work a treat in the real world, according to researchers who looked at records of 60 million people.

Get ’em if you smoke ’em

If you’re a pharma maker with some extra manufacturing space you’d like to unload, the medical-cannabis industry is interested in having a chat.

Overdose deaths look like they’ll be dropping

And it would be the first time since 1990.

[CDC] data predict there were nearly 69,100 drug deaths in the 12-month period ending last November, down from almost 72,300 predicted deaths for 12 months ending November 2017. If the trend holds through December, annual drug deaths will fall for the first time since 1990, when overdoses killed about 8,400 people.

Do you sell blood-glucose meters?

It seems that over the past 20 years, LifeScan meters had more problems that any other medical device on the market, period.

Common problems included displaying incorrect messages, losing power or being damaged before customers started using them, according to the database.

That’s one bit of info that came out of the FDA’s once-secret database of medical device malfunctions and injuries, which was recently released. (Other devices with lots of issues: dental implants, surgical staplers, and breast implants.)

Flu vaccine results

This past flu season’s vaccine was doing great … until a new strain of flu started making the rounds. At first, it was about 47% effective, but that plunged to only 9% (“virtually worthless”) against the newer strain, giving a final result of about 29% effective for the year.

This past season, 44 Georgians were killed by the flu, and 1,582 were hospitalized.

Looking ahead, the 2019-2020 flu season’s vaccines will protect against two ‘A’ strains — H1N1 (A/Brisbane/02/2018), H3N2 (A/Kansas/14/2017) — and one ‘B’ strain (B/Colorado/06/2017-like). The quadrivalent version will also protect against a second ‘B’ strain (B/Phuket/3073/2013-like).

Meanwhile, in the hospital

Hospital pharmacists: What’s the best way you can think to spend, say, $359 million? I bet “dealing with drug shortages” isn’t on your list. And yet….

Oh, and when older patients are discharged, they may not take their meds anyway because they can’t afford them. Even with health insurance of some kind, 14% of urban patients and 26% of rural patients said they didn’t always take their medication because of the cost.

You know what can help? Asking patients if they can afford their meds. The alternative ain’t great:

Methods commonly described to pay for medicines included: pharmacy
discount programs, spending less on basic needs like food and heat,
borrowing money, skipping doses of medicines to save money, increased credit card debt and asking a relative to buy medicines.

Up, up … and away?

The U.S. “suicide belt” contains a lot of higher-altitude cities and towns. Could the lower oxygen be a factor?

Viral for a reason

If you haven’t seen the video of the injured dog who went into a pharmacy for help (and got it, of course), you owe it to yourself to see it.