On the eve of the Final Four, please allow me a personal moment to say to all of the West Virginia Mountaineers out there…

LET’S GO!

On a gram-for-gram basis, many drugs are now more expensive than gold. That fact is not lost on the criminals among us, as reflected in a pharmacist.com news story detailing several recent heists of medications and nutritional products. But remember one thing: These thieves wouldn’t have risked doing this if there weren’t a brisk black market in the United States for the sale of diverted or stolen pharmaceuticals.

I believe pharmacists in this country take supply-chain integrity for granted. I say this with the perspective of someone who spent almost 8 years doing supply-chain audits and chasing diverted drugs all over the world. My opinion doesn’t come just from my own experiences (which focused largely on the mainstream distribution system in the United States, where major improvements in security have occurred) but also from conversations and meetings with many industry security professionals who are faced with protecting their companies’ products. These folks are challenged every day in this country and around the world. 

These recent high-profile thefts should serve as a reminder to all pharmacists to pay attention to where you purchase your pharmaceuticals. Know your distributor and ask questions about their practices. Do not respond to faxes offering deals you know are too good to be true. These thieves will find someone to buy their take—make sure it isn’t one of your patients who ends up with these diverted drugs! If you are not careful, this could happen to you.

In addition, be sure to warn your patients about the dangers of buying drugs from the Internet. Most diverted drugs will find their way to consumers through this channel. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy tries to warn Internet consumers they should use only known sites that are verified through NABP’s VIPPS program. But with all the noise consumers hear, it is a difficult message to convey. Be sure your patients hear it!

By 8:30 this Friday morning, one inch of the APhA Annual Meeting was complete! I sat in the staff office at the convention center in Washington, DC, and thinned out the binder that contains schedules, scripts and “continuities,” contact information, presentations, and background information. Hundreds of functions occur in what to an outsider may look like a cacophony of activity, but in reality is a well-choreographed set of events whose planning started years ago.

For me, the first on-site meetings began on Wednesday. By this morning, I was able to take an inch of paper out of my binder, which serves as my “bible” through the roughly 7 days of meetings.

Our Board of Trustees meeting is complete, and our work with state associations is well under way. It is so energizing to associate with so many motivated and innovative pharmacists. While we’re beating last year’s attendance numbers, I wish we could get every pharmacist in America to attend. We could cross-pollinate best practices so much faster if more pharmacists congregated, engaged, and networked in forums like this one.

For APhA2010, the train has left the station. All the planning is done, and now we execute! In what will seem like a blur, the meeting will be over. We will review everything that happened so that APhA2011 can be our best Annual Meeting ever!

If you are reading this, and you are not here in Washington, make your plans now to be in Seattle on March 25–28, 2011. And make sure you attend your state association meeting this year! The wealth of information and networking opportunities available at pharmacy meetings are a great way to recharge your professional batteries and stay current in your practice. I’ll see you at many state association meetings this year and APhA2011 next March!

PS You can follow all the action at APhA2010 on Twitter and Facebook. Follow our Twitter feed or find us on Facebook.

I received a call yesterday from Chris Worral and Jeff Kelman of CMS, one relating news that affects the provision of Part D prescription drugs to more than 123,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Pharmacists, as front-line practitioners, will be instrumental in helping patients understand the situation and what is happening to their medicines.

CMS terminated its contract with a prescription drug plan (PDP), Fox Insurance Company, which was providing Part D benefits to patients in 21 states. The action took effect immediately. All patients enrolled with Fox will temporarily receive their medications through LI Net/Humana, a program run by Medicare and administered by Humana. More details about this action are available in a news article posted last night on pharmacist.com.

Dr. Kelman stressed to me that all drugs will be reimbursed and that patients should not walk out of pharmacies empty handed. Implicit in that statement is that CMS will back the pharmacies if questions arose.

I encourage all pharmacists who encounter patients affected by this action to take a moment to explain to them that medicines are being covered and that patients have the option of choosing a new PDP between now and May 1. If beneficiaries do not choose a new PDP, one will be assigned for them by CMS, so it is important they proactively choose a plan that will best meet their needs.

Luckily, our Board of Trustees met at APhA headquarters in Washington the last weekend of January, not this snow-stricken first one of February. Among the progress made by our Trustees was a review of the current status of pharmacy education.

During our meeting, we were briefed by representatives from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) on the state of the rapidly changing world of education. New schools, rising standards, IPPEs (introductory pharmacy practice experiences) and simulation, and the enhanced continuing professional education credit criterion were all topics of discussion. We also reviewed the evolving concept of Continuing Professional Development, or CPD. You’ll be hearing more about all of these topics in coming months and years.

We are fortunate to have ACPE working to ensure that our country’s pharmacists and future pharmacists maintain the highest educational standards. ACPE is an incredible organizations run by dedicated individuals. Sometimes their rules may seem inflexible or illogical. When that occurs, constructive public debate follows and the process gets better. Ultimately, our patients benefit. Here’s a tip of the hat to a group of dedicated folks at ACPE.

Our staff members at APhA are also working hard to assimilate new rules, criteria, and standards to ensure that we maintain the excellent pharmacists our educational efforts are expected to produce, as measured by the new standards of education and outcomes measurement. Come see what I mean at APhA2010, coming up in Washington from March 12 to 15. And don’t worry–the snow will be gone by then!

In a few days, I’ll be presenting at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Interim Meeting 2010. Those attending this meeting are the folks most intently focused on ongoing improvement in our education of pharmacists. It will be a privilege to visit with them and to learn about their innovations intended to better our profession and patient care. This group is especially creative, so I expect to receive information I can use on Capitol Hill to make our case for pharmacists’ services.

Our team has had numerous discussions with the UN and other agencies involved in Haitian relief efforts. In an unbelievable response to our call for volunteers over the weekend, the Global Action Foundation received 2000 emails and about 600 calls from APhA members. To say the least, the group’s staff members are thrilled but overwhelmed, especially given the chaos and uncertainty on the ground in Haiti and to some degree the Dominican Republic they are also dealing with.

To those pharmacists who volunteered, please know that the Global Action Foundation is working to compile a list of available pharmacists and make decisions on how to proceed. Because of the chaos, priority is being given to volunteers with disaster response experience. But this will be a long-term effort, so the information on all volunteers will be valuable for months to come.

At APhA, we will receive appropriate information so that we can assist the Foundation. We are also exploring ways we can share permissable information with other agencies or organizations that are looking for pharmacists to volunteer for medical missions in the future.

APhA will place a message in Monday’s Focus e-mail newsletter updating everyone on this situation and thanking those who volunteered.

Thanks to those who expressed interest. Stay tuned, and bless you!

So far, we have two comments on my earlier blog post that challenged readers to describe what you do in terms an eighth grader could understand. We’ll be taking your descriptions through the weekend, and then will award a copy of The Practitioner’s Quick Reference to Nonprescription Drugs to the best one.

In case you are unfamiliar with the “prize,” The Practitioner’s Quick Reference to Nonprescription Drugs contains information from the current edition of APhA’s more comprehensive Handbook of Nonprescription Drugs: An Interactive Approach to Self-Care. Information in the quick reference has been edited and formatted to include only the content that practitioners are most likely to need during self-care consultations with patients. The book covers 25 common self-treatable conditions including acne, common cold, cough, fever, and headache.

Take a shot! We look forward to reading your descriptions.