Article on Drug Interactions

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CVS has the highest failure rate? I am shock...SHOCK I tell you.

All businesses only care about one thing - the bottom line.

Pharmacists are not paid for catching these potential dangerous interactions so Larry Merlo cut staff hours to maximize profit. CVS just increased their dividend pay out by 18%. Guess where is that money going to come from?

Let's also be honest with ourselves. Many veteran pharmacists are not uptodate and frankly, many of them just want to collect their nice paycheck and go home.


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Is it legal for a doctor to write prescriptions that are intentionally harmful for the purpose of an investigation? Likewise for a reporter to present intentonally fraudulent prescriptions?

That is a pretty harrowing report as a lot of those interaction deserve at least a doctor's call and counseling with others being pretty well known contraindications.
 
30%, way to go Walgreens???
 
And almost all of them subclinical or outright bogus in the actual situation. No one, and I mean no one, really knows the secret sauce about most of the modern drug interactions why the chemistry SHOULD spark an interaction but even if it does (and not always or even usually), the interaction is subclinical. Now with the old drugs: phenytoin, theophylline, warfarin, clozapine etc., you bet that those NTI drugs would blow up something but it was that particular drug, not the interaction itself. That's an entire field called pharmacovigilance which pays a bunch of pharmacists to sit around with little effect while we still don't know what exactly makes a drug interaction actually work out badly for a patient.

The best part about modern pharmacology and pharmacy are that both the drugs and systems are designed with low lawsuit potentials in mind such that most people even taking them completely incorrectly or not at all won't permanently harm themselves. It's a difference from the 50s where drugs were approved with the moniker that if they are taken correctly, they should work ok, but we make no guarantees. It's that climate that kept diphenhydramine, aspirin, and phenylpropylamine as OTC agents where irresponsible use would kill you (and even responsible use has risks in certain people), but would possibly not even get through the NDA today for the main indications.
 
CVS has the highest failure rate? I am shock...SHOCK I tell you.

All businesses only care about one thing - the bottom line.

Pharmacists are not paid for catching these potential dangerous interactions so Larry Merlo cut staff hours to maximize profit. CVS just increased their dividend pay out by 18%. Guess where is that money going to come from?

Let's also be honest with ourselves. Many veteran pharmacists are not uptodate and frankly, many of them just want to collect their nice paycheck and go home.


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It says independents have the highest failure rate.


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And almost all of them subclinical or outright bogus in the actual situation. No one, and I mean no one, really knows the secret sauce about most of the modern drug interactions why the chemistry SHOULD spark an interaction but even if it does (and not always or even usually), the interaction is subclinical. Now with the old drugs: phenytoin, theophylline, warfarin, clozapine etc., you bet that those NTI drugs would blow up something but it was that particular drug, not the interaction itself. That's an entire field called pharmacovigilance which pays a bunch of pharmacists to sit around with little effect while we still don't know what exactly makes a drug interaction actually work out badly for a patient.

The best part about modern pharmacology and pharmacy are that both the drugs and systems are designed with low lawsuit potentials in mind such that most people even taking them completely incorrectly or not at all won't permanently harm themselves. It's a difference from the 50s where drugs were approved with the moniker that if they are taken correctly, they should work ok, but we make no guarantees. It's that climate that kept diphenhydramine, aspirin, and phenylpropylamine as OTC agents where irresponsible use would kill you (and even responsible use has risks in certain people), but would possibly not even get through the NDA today for the main indications.

The caveat to this being that our low lawsuit potential systems lead to alerts firing for every little thing. Some people will bypass all of them, yet others have no ability to parse out the important ones. I once worked with a very nice woman that would call the doctor for literally every single med warning that popped. Lady, drinking a glass of water is just as likely to cause some QT interval issue as taking this drug. Get over here and help me check the batch!

edit: I say that and yet I loved her more than anyone else at that job, no questions asked.
 
I'm glad they used a real drug interaction thanks obvious and not some bs one. Like an acei and dyazide from a cardiologist presented at the same time. I'm kinda surprised indies were so high. Guess you can't pass up on that sweet generic reimbursement.

Edit: I don't call the md to cover my rear, I call when I actually think someone might get hurt. lots of hypothetical and unlikely stuff that sounds serious is a wast of time
 
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Good. I'm glad this is out there. And I hope the public realizes the pressure for speed and stress their pharmacist is under. I hope the public realizes that pharmacists don't get breaks and can do up to 14 hour shifts, nonstop. The workload of the average pharmacist is way too high.
And this...
The color indicators on computer screens are meant to help pharmacists with prioritizing their work, CVS said. The company also wrote that several years ago it removed a red indicator for prescriptions that had gone beyond the promised pickup time because pharmacists "felt the color red denoted something negative or alarming."

"We switched to an 'orange' indicator to inform a pharmacy team which prescriptions may not be ready before a customer's expected arrival time," CVS wrote.

"They don't feel rushed. See? It's ORANGE."

That is one of the more laughable examples of corporate speak I've seen in a while. Not sure who's worse, CVS's IT department or their insult-your-intelligence PR team.
 
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TBH if these fake script pairs weren't billed to insurance they would immediately stand out to me, especially if presented simultaneously.

And why would an adult be taking griseofulvin suspension?

Even better, the chains are just saying **** they already do and won't say **** about staffing levels or appropriate RPH overlap.

Currently, CVS allows pharmacists to override computer alerts if they review the warning and accompanying medical literature and conclude the prescription is appropriate. In the future, the system will not allow pharmacies to dispense certain flagged medications unless the pharmacists document in the computer that they have called the doctor or counseled the patient.

The requirement for documentation is already there at CVS.

Walmart already requires counseling on new RX but the way the system flags new scripts is ****ing awful. They will mandate counseling on **** that is one day "late" (and the system goes by fill date, not even POS date) or days early according to the computer system calculation even though I don't recall any regulation by pharmacy boards that mandate counseling for non-compliance. Whatever happened to professional judgment? (The main reason for this probably pertains to star ratings.) This promotes "counseling" fatigue where RPH start by asking "have you had this before?" just to get people out the door.

Remember the DUR engine has the potential for misses, not just unsubstantiated ones like like fenofibrate + statin. For example at Walmart there are zero alerts (even minor alerts) for Contrave + tramadol. Think about how many DUR alerts you blow past for multiple serotonergic agents. I even got an email from Walmart field support stating there is no published evidence to support a warning for an interaction alert related to the mu opioid receptor (doesn't even warrant a minor alert?) Even at CVS as I recall Contrave + opioid is only an "intermediate" DDI alert.
 
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Couple of takeaways...

1. You can't draw any real conclusions on the "who's pharmacy is safer" front with this small of a sample size. Interesting, but 30 aint enough. Did you guys forget your trial design? And they lumped all the Indi's together!?!?! And then called them worst!?!?! Statistical disaster. This would never make JAMA, that's all I'm saying.

2. Griseofulvin? That one would raise some serious eyebrows.

Edit: It's also worth noting the vast majority of RXs are filled accurately and safely. Not trying to toot Larry's horn or anything, but these kind of articles can be misleading to the general public.
 
I actually see griseofulvin every month or so. Not usually in liquid form. We have a large immigrant population where I live and they seem to be the ones who get it...I haven't seen it used in a female ever though.
 
I actually see griseofulvin every month or so. Not usually in liquid form. We have a large immigrant population where I live and they seem to be the ones who get it...I haven't seen it used in a female ever though.

Yeah. When I worked in be inner city we used gallons of the stuff for fungal skin infections in kids. At least one a week
 
Yeah. When I worked in be inner city we used gallons of the stuff for fungal skin infections in kids. At least one a week

Yeeks... I can't remember the last time I ever saw griseofulvin in a real life setting (rotations, maybe? 5 years ago?). I guess it's what you're tuned into...I'd probably miss that DDI, but I see a lot of vori for IPA in transplant patients on tacro, so that's like the first thing I look for.
 
Couple of takeaways...

1. You can't draw any real conclusions on the "who's pharmacy is safer" front with this small of a sample size. Interesting, but 30 aint enough. Did you guys forget your trial design? And they lumped all the Indi's together!?!?! And then called them worst!?!?! Statistical disaster. This would never make JAMA, that's all I'm saying.

Of course you are right about the study being underpowered, but what is wrong with lumping all the Indi's together? How should they be categorized?
 
Of course you are right about the study being underpowered, but what is wrong with lumping all the Indi's together? How should they be categorized?
Only reporting them together skews the data (if there was enough data in the first place). This is illustrated by looking at "All chains combined" failure rate, compared to that of the individual chains. That rate makes CVS look way better, and it makes WAGs look way worse. My point was it was probably a little unfair to some solid indies that passed but got lumped in with the rest. Just my opinion. I'm definitely not reviewing for JAMA any time soon either 😀
 
Only reporting them together skews the data (if there was enough data in the first place). This is illustrated by looking at "All chains combined" failure rate, compared to that of the individual chains. That rate makes CVS look way better, and it makes WAGs look way worse. My point was it was probably a little unfair to some solid indies that passed but got lumped in with the rest. Just my opinion. I'm definitely not reviewing for JAMA any time soon either 😀

But to this point lumping all CVSs and all WAGs together probably skews performance of some solid CVSs and solid WAGs. Point being there are good eggs and bad eggs everywhere. You need to group things at some level somewhere to get some tangible comparison. Yes while not scientific nor acceptable from a significance level, I think the piece served its function in getting people to have a discussion about it. I don't think the tribune was attempting to suggest a new treatment guideline with peer reviewed evidence based rationale
 
Let's also be honest with ourselves. Many veteran pharmacists are not uptodate and frankly, many of them just want to collect their nice paycheck and go home.
/QUOTE]

Obviously this is a generalization, but there is certainly some merit to this statement.
 
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