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January 21, 2010

Online Pharmacy Store – A Comfortable Way To Get Prescribed Medicine.

Filed under: Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 3:38 pm

In recent years, the world has become an online store with the revolution of the internet.  Especially, the medication field is also changed its way of transactions after the internet revolution.Nowadays, there are so many online pharmacies are helping their valuable customers to get medicines through online in a short span of time. There are so many online pharmacy stores are proving as a reliable medication provider.You can purchase all generic types of medicines, prescribed drugs and big number of health care products and popular beauty products.You can purchase these products at affordable rates.Some of the online pharmacy stores are approved by the World Health Organization.

Many of us facing such a situation that unable to go out from home or unable to find pharmacy stores, which is far from our home.In that situation, the online pharmacy store is the best solution for our needs at ease.Some of the online pharmacy stores are providing prescribed drugs at discounted prices as part of increasing business. And also they are providing some extreme facilities to their valuable customer with the most affordable, reliable and secure online pharmacy shopping experience. In these competitive business days, if any online stores provide good customer service, then it will quickly turn to a good serving honest firm. You can purchase medicine from your comfortable home; this is very much useful to the individuals.The present lifestyle for everyone has become more hectic, and even they do not have much to shop for some medicine.For those people, these online stores will be definitely helpful.Due to some health condition, some of the people are unable to go out to purchase medicine for their regular usage; they easily purchase the medicines at their doorsteps without any hassle.

There are so many advantages in purchasing online medicines.The online store is a convenient, economical and efficient, mostly in the time of crisis like the natural disaster across the country.  It is the safest way of online purchasing, especially, your area reported with high crime rates.      However, if you have any question, you take the help internet, and you can ask your question in medical forums where you will get a right answer for you.And also some of the online pharmacy stores are providing online consultations with some professional doctors.

And also you can purchase prescribed drugs through a secured online system.These drug stores are maintaining a wide range of customer data and online transactions with high security systems. There are so many online pharmacy stores are having their own websites.You need to do a small search on this internet to avail these services.

January 19, 2010

Mail-Order Pharmacies Use Improves Patients’ Medication Adherence

Filed under: Uncategorized — Senior Helping Senior @ 12:10 am

Buying medicine by mail may encourage patients to stick to their doctor-prescribed medication regimen, new research suggests.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from UCLA and Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., found that patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol who ordered their medications by mail were more likely to take them as prescribed by their physicians than patients who obtained medications from a local pharmacy.

The study findings appear in the online edition of the American Journal of Managed Care.

“The field of medication adherence research typically focuses on patient factors for poor adherence, leading to a ‘blame the patient’ approach for non-adherence,” said Dr. O. Kenrik Duru, the study’s lead researcher and an assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“Our work helps to place this issue in a larger perspective,” Duru said. “Our findings indicate that mail-order pharmacies streamline the medication-acquisition process, which is associated with better medication adherence.”

For the 12-month study, researchers analyzed medication refill data from 2006 and 2007 for 13,922 Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California. They defined “good adherence” as having medication available and on-hand at least 80 percent of the time.

The researchers found that 84.7 percent of patients who received their medications by mail at least two-thirds of the time stuck to their physician-prescribed regimen, compared with 76.9 percent of those who picked up their medications at traditional “brick-and-mortar” Kaiser Permanente pharmacies.

“The results were consistent for all three classes of medication, including medications to control diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol,” said co-investigator Julie A. Schmittdiel, Ph.D., a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente research division.

Other findings include:

- Before adjusting for other variables, white patients were more likely than Hispanics to obtain medications by mail (61.0 percent vs. 37.1 percent) and to be in the highest socioeconomic status quartile (27.5 percent vs. 17.8 percent).

- Mail-order pharmacy users were more likely than local pharmacy users to have a financial incentive to fill their prescriptions (49.6 percent vs. 23.0 percent) and to live a greater distance from a local pharmacy (8.0 miles vs. 6.7 miles). An example of a financial incentive is receiving a three-month supply of medication for the cost of a two-month supply.

- After adjusting for other variables, whites were more likely to use mail-order pharmacies (24.1 percent) than were Asian/Pacific Islanders (8.4 percent), Hispanics (5.2 percent), African Americans (4.0 percent) and individuals of mixed race (8.0 percent).

While other research has examined the association between medication costs and mail-order and local pharmacies, this is the first study to look at the relationship between pharmacy type and medication adherence. Furthermore, it controls for differences in out-of-pocket costs and medication supply (by number of days) between mail-order and local pharmacy users, something other datasets have not included.

“In other words, our study is able to isolate the use of mail-order pharmacies specifically, without the results being affected by differences in cost or in the number of pills provided with each dispensing,” Duru said.

The study does have some limitations. For example, the findings need to be confirmed by a randomized controlled trial.

Still, the research suggests that increased mail-order use to obtain medications could improve patients’ adherence.

In addition to Duru and Schmittdiel, researchers included Wendy Dyer, Melissa Parker, Connie Uratsu, James Chan and Andrew J. Karter of the research division at Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

Grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases funded this study.

The Kaiser Permanente Division of Research conducts, publishes and disseminates epidemiologic and health services research to improve the health and medical care of Kaiser Permanente members and society at large. The division seeks to understand the determinants of illness and well-being and to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. Currently, the division’s 500-plus staff is working on more than 250 epidemiological and health services research projects.

January 12, 2010

FDA To Review Popular Blood-Stimulating Drugs

Filed under: Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 5:25 pm

The Food and Drug Administration plans to review the use of the popular anti-anemia drugs Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp because of persistent evidence they can raise the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular death.

These so-called erythropoietin drugs are among the very first fruits of the biotech revolution, the manufacture of naturally occurring biologic substances to treat disease. The anti-anemia drugs, which potently stimulate the body’s production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, built Amgen and launched Johnson & Johnson into the biotech biz.

Doctors often prescribe erythropoietin drugs to treat anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease. They’re also used in patients on cancer chemotherapy, which can cause anemia.

The FDA will convene an expert advisory panel sometime this year in an effort to figure out just what it is about these landmark biotech agents that can be harmful. The announcement comes in an article posted online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Randomized trials involving nearly 7,000 patients have documented increased cardiovascular risk among patients on these red blood cell-boosters. But the cause has been elusive.

FDA officials say it could stem from too-aggressive doses of the drugs — in an attempt to get patients’ red cell counts to normal levels. Or it could be due to a too-rapid rise in red cell counts; fluctuations in red cell levels — or some other mechanism entirely.

The FDA says the risk of cardiovascular harm — a 33 percent greater chance of fatal and nonfatal heart attacks, and a nearly 200 percent increased risk of stroke — does not seem to be offset by meaningful benefits, such as greater energy.

“The overall quality-of-life effects were small and inconsistent,” the FDA officials write, adding that available evidence does not “rule out the possibility… that modest increases in the hemoglobin level should be beneficial.”

The problem is, optimal hemoglobin target levels have never been established, nor the safest way to get to the target. That’s the task of the upcoming review.

January 11, 2010

One Million Seniors Get More Generous Prescription Drug Benefits

Filed under: Health News — Senior Helping Senior @ 6:52 pm

As of Jan. 1, more than 1 million low-income seniors “are newly eligible for more generous prescription drug benefits under the ‘extra help’ program” in Medicare, The Associated Press reports.

Benefiting from this change are applicants who have life insurance policies or who regularly receive money from relatives to help pay for household expenses. They were previously disqualified because of too many assets or too much income. “Income limits are $16,245 a year for singles and $21,855 for married couples living together. Assets such as stocks, bonds and bank accounts must be limited to $12,510 for singles and $25,010 for married couples. The value of homes and automobiles are excluded.”

About 30 percent of seniors enrolled in the prescription program, Medicare Part D, are also enrolled in the “extra help” – also known as the low-income subsidy – program. “For many, the extra help program eliminates premiums and annual deductibles and charges copays as low as $1.10 for generic drugs and $3.30 for brand names” (Ohlemacher, 1/8).

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery atkaiserhealthnews.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

Better heart drugs possible from genetic discovery

Filed under: Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 6:50 pm

PARIS – Researchers on Sunday said they had identified more than a dozen genes that help modulate heart rate, a finding that one day may lead to smarter cardiac drugs.

Three teams, working separately, netted the genes after comparing the DNA codes of tens of thousands of people of European and Indian descent.

The genes control electrical impulses that drive the muscles in the cardiac pump. These signals are transmitted by specialised proteins in muscle cells called ion channels.

People with different variants of the genes can be more — or, alternatively, less — at risk of heart flutter and other rhythm problems, according to the authors, publishing in the journal Nature Genetics.

The studies were carried out by deCODE Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland; Imperial College London; and the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, Germany.

Heart disease accounts for more than almost seven million deaths a year, half of them through abrupt changes in rhythm, such as a condition called ventricular fibrillation.

© Copyright (c) AFP

January 4, 2010

Over A Quarter Of Brits Are Not Taking Their Medicines Correctly

Filed under: Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 4:01 pm

Many people stock up on medicines in the run up to Christmas and New Year. A survey* conducted by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has discovered that 29% of people in the United Kingdom, over the age of 50, admit they forget to take their prescribed medicine. While 22% stop taking their medicine before the end of the course if they feel better.

People who take prescribed medicines may take less than half the prescribed dose. Some forget, some misunderstand the instructions, and some refuse to believe they need medicines treatment at all.

John Turk, NPA Chief Executive said: “The statistics are not surprising as it is not always possible for GPs to enter into extended explanations about particular treatments, and even if they do patients may not remember or take in all the information provided.”

“Most people associate their local pharmacy with the dispensing of prescriptions and see it as a place where they can also buy medicines over the counter. However, pharmacists should be seen as the first port of call for healthcare advice and the best source of advice on medicines. No other health professional is as highly trained in medicines and their use as a pharmacist.”

The Medicines Use Review service at community pharmacies in England and Wales is a free service that helps improve people’s understanding and makes sure people get the most out of their medicines. The Medicines Use Review consultation is held in an area where the patient and the pharmacist can have a private discussion.

The NPA is keen to encourage people to make more use of clinical services available from community pharmacy. Despite the fact that pharmacists have five years’ training and are highly accessible many people are still unaware that they can discuss any aspect of their medicine related care with their pharmacist.

December 22, 2009

Nearly 60 Million Went Without Health Coverage In Recent Year

Filed under: Health News — Senior Helping Senior @ 10:33 pm

How many people in this country are without insurance? About 60 million during all or part of a recent year, according to anestimate just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From interviews by the Census Bureau, the CDC figures 45.4 million people, or 15.1% of the U.S. population of all ages didn’t have any health insurance when the question was posed during the first half of 2009. But widen the question ask if people didn’t have coverage for any part of the past year and you get to 58.4 million people, or 19.4 percent of the population.

To us, the real interesting stuff emerges in the group of folks aged 18 to 64, generally without recourse to Medicare or to SCHIP coverage for kids.

In that group, about 1 in 4 people didn’t have health coverage for at least part of the year. That figure, lower than the 1 in 5 who were uninsured at the time the questions were asked, illustrates how commonplace it is for people to slip in and out of coverage.

For the broader health overhaul debate, it’s another reminder of how vulnerable people in their working years are to losing insurance. Indeed, 60.6 percent of the unemployed 15- to 64-year-olds had been without coverage for at least part of the past year.

And each lapse also raises the possibility of a coverage denial when a person tries to get insured again.

Senators Who Voted Against Drug Imports Got More Big Pharma Money

Filed under: Health News, Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 10:30 pm

Nobody on Capitol Hill takes kindly to a spreadsheet that lines up their campaign contributions with their floor votes. But that’s what Maplight.org, a nonprofit database operation, has just done, producing a mashup with the tally from the Senate’s vote Monday on drug importation and 6 1/2 years of campaign finance data.

How The Big Recipients Of Drugmakers’ Contributions Voted On Drug Importation

Senator Party Pharma money Vote
Max Baucus, MT D $261,020 No
Richard Burr, NC R 301,898 No
Orrin Hatch, UT R 262,950 No
Joe Lieberman, CT I 199,540 No
Mitch McConnell, KY R 225,900 Yes
Arlen Specter, PA D 353,550 Yes
Source: Maplight.org

Importation is illegal. Advocates of legalizing it say that American consumers would save $100 billion over 10 years, as competition would force prices down for prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration say drug safety would be jeopardized. When importation was proposed as an amendment to health care overhaul, the Senate rejected it — 51 for importation and 48 against, with 60 needed to approve.

And if you look at the Maplight analysis, you’ll find–little surprise here–that senators voting nay have averaged 66 percent more in campaign contributions from Big Pharma than senators who voted yea. The difference: $85,812 vs. $51,803, spread over the period Jan. 1, 2003, to Aug. 12, 2009. Not a lot of dollars if you prorate it, but it is consistent.

Maplight earlier ran the numbers on a couple other pharma-related votes–a Senate Finance Committee vote on Medicare drug prices three months ago and, in a less refined analysis, a 2007 Senate vote on an earlier prescription drug bill.

Political scientists have devoted years to debating the potential links between votes and money. The predominant wisdom: money doesn’t move votes, it follows them. Donors tend to give to lawmakers who already are on their side.

The Maplight data don’t settle that debate. What they do point out, however, is the enduring relationships between lawmakers and interest groups, and the monetary cement that helps them bond.

December 16, 2009

Prescription Drug Import Amendment Divides Senate Democrats

Filed under: Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 2:42 pm

The Senate is battling over a proposed amendment that would allow prescription drugs to be imported from other countries where prices are lower.

“Drugmakers intensified their lobbying push Monday against a popular proposal to allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs from other countries, one of several heated disputes that have bogged down negotiations over a heath-care reform bill,”The Washington Post reports. The dispute complicated Senate Democrats’ efforts to rally 60 pass health reform legislation before Christmas and also “poses a particularly difficult political challenge for President Obama, who co-sponsored a similar bill when he was in Congress and who included funding for the idea in his first budget.”

“The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), would allow pharmacies and wholesalers to import U.S.-approved medication from Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, where drug costs are far lower because of price controls. The measure has attracted bipartisan support from lawmakers, including Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).” The pharmaceutical industry, however, “has responded with a fierce lobbying campaign aimed at killing the proposal, focusing on Democratic senators from states with large drug and research sectors.” (Eggen, 12/15).

NPR: “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated there could be more than $100 billion in savings to U.S. prescription drug buyers over the next decade – $20 billion of which would be for the federal government – if cheaper prescription drugs from abroad were allowed to compete in the U.S. market. But opponents question the safety of the drugs. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg wrote several senators saying she commends the efforts Dorgan has made to reduce risks associated with importing prescription drugs. Still, she concluded his measure has too many unresolved safety issues” (Welna, 12/14).

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

December 15, 2009

Drug Importation Takes Center Stage On Senate Floor

Filed under: Health News, Money Saver, Pharmacy — Senior Helping Senior @ 9:51 pm

Debate on a proposal that would make it easier to bring prescription drugs into the country from abroad is taking center stage on the Senate floor as part of the health care reform debate.

The Associated Press: “A bipartisan group of lawmakers hopes to finally win a long struggle to ease curbs against importing low-cost prescription drugs but will have to overcome the Obama administration and the pharmaceutical industry to do so.” The amendment would “allow U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers to import Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs from Canada, Europe and a few other countries. People on both sides of the issue say it will be tough for supporters to get the 60 votes they’ll need to win” (Fram, 12/10).

The Seattle Times/The Associated Press: “Some import supporters question whether the administration is acting to keep the powerful pharmaceutical industry’s support for [President Barack] Obama’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health-care system. An administration official denied that. … Even before Dorgan introduced it Tuesday night, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent senators a letter saying the plan would be ‘logistically challenging’ to implement and raises ’significant safety concerns.’ … Dorgan said he was surprised by the letter because Obama co-sponsored Dorgan’s proposal in 2007 as a freshman Democratic senator from Illinois. In addition, Dorgan noted, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel sponsored another version of the bill that same year as a Democratic House member from Illinois” (Fram, 12/10).

The Wall Street Journal: “In a letter to Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg also said overseeing importation would be ‘resource intensive.’ The letter was a response to a request by Sen. Brownback, who in the past has opposed reimportation of drugs.” Dorgan responded by calling the FDA letter “completely bogus” (Mundy, 12/9).

Bloomberg reports that drugmakers are speaking out against a proposal to allow reimportation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. “The plan, from lawmakers led by (senators) North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, drew fire from drugmakers such as Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co.”

“‘It would be a huge mistake for Congress to pursue policies that could expose Americans to counterfeit and substandard drug products,’ said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the Washington industry association” (Gaouette and Jensen, 12/10).

CQ HealthBeat also reports on the FDA letter: “It was unclear when the Senate might vote on the amendment offered by Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D. … John McCain, R-Ariz., said the deal with the pharmaceutical industry was the real reason behind the FDA letter. He mocked the agency’s reasoning in the letter. … [Meanwhile], Hamburg ended the letter by promising to work with senators to explore other options for drug importation (Ethridge, 12/9).

See related news on Wednesday’s Senate negotiations and debate on drug re-importation at Kaiser Health News.

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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