Plenful has completed a $17 million Series A funding round, bringing its total fundraising amount to date to more than $25 million. The startup offers a software platform that automates the manual and administrative tasks that burden pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
Tracey James, chief operating officer of Walgreens' specialty pharmacy business, talked about the retailer's vision of innovating in the specialty pharmacy world, as well as about affordability and access.
At the Payer Insights sessions on Day 1 of ViVE 2024, a panel on prior authorization offered compelling insights from speakers who shared the positive developments in this area after years of mounting frustration. Speakers also shared challenges as they work with providers to figure out how policy developments and technology will work in practice.
The regulatory environment and workforce shortages are plaguing the pharmacy industry, one Walgreens exec shared at the Abarca Forward conference on Tuesday.
The Pharmacy Guild recently launched and aims to create the first national pharmacy union in the U.S. But it has a difficult road ahead going up against giants like Walgreens and CVS. Still, its organizers expect the union to be successful.
Researchers recently tested ChatGPT’s ability to answer patient questions about medication, finding that the AI model gave wrong or incomplete answers about 75% of the time. Providers should be wary of the fact that the model does not always give sound medical advice, given many of their patients could be turning to ChatGPT to answer health-related questions.
We should strive for a future where patients have easy and affordable access to medications, supported on their journey by trusted pharmacy professionals who are an integral part of their care team.
This eBook, in collaboration with Care Logistics, details how hospitals and health systems can facilitate more effective decision-making by operationalizing elevated awareness.
Walgreens is seeing “an enormous amount of demand” for injectable weight loss drugs, its president of U.S. healthcare said during the Reuters Total Health conference in Chicago. He declared that the healthcare industry needs to come up with a reimbursement model “that correctly compensates pharmacists and others” to administer these drugs. In his view, reimbursement hasn't caught up with the demand.
Walgreens pharmacy staff are staging walkouts from October 30 to November 1. One organizer said it's because pharmacy staff are being tasked with too many responsibilities, making it difficult for them to safely fill prescriptions.
Rite Aid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday amid decreasing sales, billions of dollars in debt and more than a thousand lawsuits claiming the chain filled illegal prescriptions for opioids. In order for the company to get back on its feet, experts say it will have to start acting more like its competitors, such as Walgreens and CVS, by leaning more into care delivery, forging strong payer partnerships, and improving its digital offerings.
San Francisco-based Plenful emerged from stealth on Tuesday. The startup sells a workflow tool that automates manual and administrative workflows for pharmacy technicians. In addition to its launch out of stealth mode, the company also announced that it has closed a $9 million funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and signed contracts with more than 20 customers.
In an era of escalating healthcare costs and a growing preference for natural, holistic approaches to health, The Impact Brands emerges as a collective of diverse brands dedicated to supporting overall wellness through natural means.
The second quarter of 2023 ended with 309 active drug shortages, the highest total in nearly a decade, according to a new report from ASHP. One of the organization’s executives pointed out that drug shortages have two major impacts on health systems: they create a lot of extra work for the pharmacy department, and they force clinicians to make tough decisions about patient care that could potentially result in worse patient outcomes.
Hospitals’ pharmacy spending is projected to rise by 3.42% next year, according to a new report. Specialty drugs, including Ozempic and Humira, as well as neurology medications are the primary drivers of this increase in pharmacy expenses.
CMS recently proposed a $9 billion lump sum payment to remedy illegal payment cuts for 340B drugs from 2018 to 2022. In general, hospital groups have reacted positively to the fact that 340B providers will receive lump sum payments but have expressed concern about CMS’ methods for maintaining budget neutrality with this plan.
There is a huge opportunity for PBMs and health systems to use AI to help address the challenges surrounding the affordability and accessibility of medicines, from navigating formularies to resolving prior authorization. More automation in pharmacies and with ordering workflows is one piece of that puzzle.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid, accusing the pharmacy chain of filling hundreds of thousands of opioid prescriptions that had “obvious, and often multiple, red flags.” The DOJ claimed that Rite Aid violated the Controlled Substances Act by filling unlawful prescriptions for addictive drugs, as well as the False Claims Act when the chain sought reimbursement from federal healthcare programs for these prescriptions.