What is Brown up to?

UPS has acquired a manufacturing pharmacy license from the Georgia Board of Pharmacy. What does it mean? Maybe not much — it might just be a paperwork thing, “required if UPS wanted to add an insert to a shipping package.” Or it could be a step toward creating a different relationship with drug manufacturers, or competing with distributors.

Flu watch

Flu activity in Georgia is still low (5 on a scale of 0-10), but it’s increasing. Most of the U.S. is still at “minimal,” except Louisiana and Puerto Rico, which are both at level 10.

What’s your flu risk?

Want to know if you’ll get sick? Ask the Weather Channel.

A new version of the company’s app uses IBM’s AI technology to predict whether you’ll get the flu. (Technically it uses the weather, anonymized health data, your searchers and social data “to assess local influenza risk up to 15 days in advance,” but that’s not nearly as fun to say.)

Measles encore

After a bit of quiet, one new case of measles has been confirmed in the U.S. — and it’s in Georgia. (DPH doesn’t say where, just that it’s notifying people who may have been exposed.)

Testing, 1-2-3

A small pharmacy in Connecticut has an unusual twist: It tests the medications it dispenses to patients — and, frighteningly, often finds discrepancies … and dangers.

Its founder started the company when he realized that some generic version of his meds worked for him, but others didn’t. Although Valisure “makes money the same way other pharmacies do — buying drugs from wholesalers and taking a cut of the price when it sells them,” it also…

…checks the chemical makeup of drugs before it ships them to consumers, and rejects more than 10 percent of the batches because their tests detect contaminants, medicine that didn’t dissolve properly or pills that contain the wrong dose, among other issues.

“Other issues” like pills that were supposed to dissolve in 15 hours but took more than 48, or, most recently, that ranitidine was contaminated with (or possibly is converted to) a carcinogen.

Start the new year with an MTM certificate

Improve your practice, your résumé, and your patients’ lives — earn an APhA medication therapy management certificate through GPhA.

Delivering Medication Therapy Management Services: A Certificate Training Program for Pharmacists offers a full-day of training — “a systematic approach for developing, implementing, delivering, and sustaining MTM services.”

The deets:

MTM Certificate Training
Saturday, August 10; 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

At GPhA Headquarters in Sandy Springs (map).

Just $349 for GPhA members
($499 for non-members)! Click here for more!

Latest healthcare numbers

Compared to other modern nations, the latest OECD report on healthcare finds that the U.S…..

• spends about twice as much per person (and as a percentage of GDP) on healthcare as any other nation;
• ranks near the bottom (just ahead of Mexico) for percentage of citizens receiving “a core set of healthcare services”;
• has below average life expectancy (but ahead of Latvia, Mexico, the Slovac Republic, and Turkey)
• has average overall outcomes (not at the bottom, not near the top).

The Long Read: If It Quacks Like a Duck Edition

“A horrifying survey of ‘pediatric naturopathic oncology’ practice”

[O]f the 99 naturopath practices surveyed that treat cancer, 47.5% also treat pediatric cancer. That’s right, nearly half of the naturopaths also ply their quackery on children with cancer.