DCH tweaks its insulin policy

If you have patients on Georgia Medicaid FFS or PeachCare for Kids, this may be important:

[T]he Department of Community Health is requiring that all pharmacy providers bill the smallest commercially available package size for Insulin Products and are required to bill the Division for the exact days’ supply, based on the directions and quantity prescribed.

Click here for the full letter from DCH (PDF).

Two sources of painkillers can be deadly

Because some vets can get opioid scripts from both VA hospitals and Medicare physicians, they’re at nearly triple the risk of an overdose — so keep an eye out.

Convention fun: sandcastles!

This year’s Georgia Pharmacy Convention features our first ever sand castle building contest: Pharm-A-Sea! Anyone can register a team to compete, and proceeds will benefit the Georgia Pharmacy Foundation.

Check out the details at GPhAconvention.com/pharm-a-sea!

Swap out to olive oil

If you have patients that are, um, gravitationally challenged, you might suggest they switch to olive oil for cooking. Some new research suggests* that olive oil in particular causes less platelet activation and thus a lower risk of heart attack or stroke in obese people.

Because we love you: Here’s a story that looks at various olive oil tests to tell you which ones are legit (California Olive Ranch, Kirkland) and which don’t meet standards.

*Suggests is the key word here

Increase your strength, decrease your diabetes?

Don’t go crazy with the weights, but “moderate muscular strength, but not upper muscular strength, was associated with a reduced risk of development of [type 2 diabetes].”

Statins, on the other hand…

They might increase diabetes risk by raising both blood sugar and insulin resistance.

The answer: “Someone is talking about you”

The question: “Why do my ears itch?” Medical News Today has the details.

The long read: The Dutch solution

“The Dutch,” a friend of mine in The Hague told me, “are a cheap people.” So when prices for drugs to treat rare diseases start to become a problem, they’re trying a different tack: compounding them.

Three [pharmacies] — Erasmus, Amsterdam’s University Medical Center (UMC), and the Transvaal Pharmacy in The Hague — have vowed to bypass drug company products and make treatments for a handful of rare diseases themselves, exercising their right to “compound” medicines.

I have no idea what this means, but it sounds important

“BMI inversely associated with palbociclib-induced neutropenia“