Downey, Kyle A., MS Pharmacy Administration, June 1999 Cost-Shifting Among Rural Montana Independent Community Pharmacies (65 pp.) Director: Timothy P. Stratton, Ph.D., R.Ph. Cost-shifting is a familiar term within the health care community and is commonly associated with hospitals. Many other health care providers, including pharmacists, have been affected by the practice. With the number of p...

Like any self-respecting public health official, it was my lifelong dream to be sued by a tobacco company. I got my wish in 2008. At that time I was the Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and we became the first locality to ban the sale of tobacco at pharmacies. Phillip Morris USA, Inc. promptly filed suit in the United States District Court to overturn the ban. Their la...

Background The objective of the current study is to elucidate the effect that the adoption of generic drugs by a large hospital has on the dispensation of generic drugs by community pharmacies. We evaluated the percentage of generic drugs dispensed by pharmacies and the cost of drugs dispensed before and after the adoption of generic drugs by a large hospital. Methods Participants comprised p...

OBJECTIVES Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) has encouraged physicians to use "chronic medication prescriptions" for patients with stable chronic diseases since 1995. Patients are allowed to refill such prescriptions at community pharmacies for a maximum of three months' supply of medications without revisiting the doctor. In 2006, NHI initiated strategies targeting the public, doctors, ...

BACKGROUND A growing number of online pharmacies have been established worldwide. Among them are numerous illegal websites selling medicine without valid medical prescriptions or distributing substandard or counterfeit drugs. Only a limited number of studies have been published on Internet pharmacies with regard to patient safety, professionalism, long-term follow-up, and pharmaceutical legitim...

Since July 2008, the state Department of Consumer Protection Prescription Monitoring Program has been gathering controlled substance prescription information from pharmacies through a database accessible to prescribers and pharmacists. It requires all Connecticut licensed pharmacies to upload their prescription information twice a month. “Our goal is to have every licensed prescriber and pharma...

We present a demo for PharmaGuard, a novel system for the automatic discovery of illegal online pharmacies. With its easy to use graphic user interface, a web application architectural approach and leveraging the powers of automatic knowledge discovery, PharmaGuard can assist law enforcement agencies in identifying, blacklisting and shuttingdown illegal pharmacies.

The number of illegal internet pharmacies selling prescription-only medicines without a prescription is increasing. Large quantities of drugs are dispensed, making drugs of abuse readily available, and further risks are posed by counterfeit medication. Urgent national and international action is required to stop further proliferation of illegal pharmacies.