Pharmacists Mutual Insurance Company Announces New Rates for Individual Pharmacist Professional Liability Coverage – Most Members to Receive Lower Premium

After a comprehensive review of their claims experience, Pharmacists Mutual Insurance Company has begun filing new rates for its Individual Pharmacist Professional Liability coverage.  Thomas Claude, Sr. Vice President of Underwriting and Product Development, commented that “Our overarching goals are to ensure we can honor the promises we make by charging adequate rates, provide excellent service to our members, and minimize as much as possible cross subsidies between members with different risk profiles.”

As a result, Pharmacists Mutual is introducing new rate classes for individuals performing sterile compounding.  Members not performing sterile compounding will receive a modest reduction in premium.  Members performing sterile compounding will see a rate increase to reflect the higher risk inherent in their practice.

The current rate for employed pharmacists in Iowa is $144.  The new rates will be $139 for members not performing sterile compounding and $299 for members engaged in sterile compounding.

The new rates have been approved in Iowa effective August 1 for new policies and October 1 for renewals. The new structure will be rolled out across the country in the next few months.

An exclusion for sterile compounding will be added to policies receiving the lower rate.  Members receiving this rate whose practice includes sterile compounding should contact Pharmacists Mutual and request a policy change.

Pharmacists Mutual expects a significant majority of its members will benefit from the lower rate.

For more information, contact Pharmacists Mutual at 515.295.2461. 

Survey of Community Pharmacies Impact of Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) Contracting and Auditing Practices on Patient Care

The Medicare Prescription Drug Program Integrity and Transparency Act (S. 867) was recently introduced by U.S. Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and would establish reasonable parameters around pharmacy audits and require regular updates to maximum allowable cost (MAC) lists and generic reimbursement in Part D.

While Part D pharmacy audits are necessary to detect fraud and abuse, PBMs are abusing this process by singling out expensive drugs and targeting typographical errors in order to recoup significant amounts of money that are in turn not turned over to the Medicare program. Also, pharmacies are typically forced to sign contracts with Part D plans and/or PBMs without any disclosure of the terms and conditions surrounding reimbursement for generic drugs. Increasingly, pharmacies are being paid below their costs to dispense and the Maximum Allowable Cost (MAC) lists are not updated on a regular basis in order to reflect generic drug spikes.

In order to provide lawmakers with the scope of the challenges faced by independent community pharmacies with regard to audits and MAC pricing in Part D, please respond to the following survey. Your responses will help to bolster NCPA advocacy efforts with regard to S. 867—a bill that would make fundamental changes with regard to audits and MAC pricing in Part D.

Immunization Action Coalition May 2013 Issue of Needle Tips

The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) has recently released its May 2013 issue of Needle Tips, for healthcare professionals who administer vaccines.  Also available is Vaccinate Adults, a shortened version of Needle Tips,modified for those who work only with adult patients. Both are now available for downloading, printing, and reading.

Here are links directly to the PDFs of the publications: Needle Tips and Vaccinate Adults.

These publications contain ready-to-print educational materials for healthcare professionals and their patients, vaccine news highlights, and IAC’s popular “Ask the Experts” Q&A column with answers by CDC experts Andrew Kroger, MD, MPH; Donna Weaver, RN, MN; and Iyabode Akinsanya-Beysolow, MD, MPH.

Needle Tips and Vaccinate Adults are available exclusively online. Current and past issues of Needle Tips are available at www.immunize.org/nt and Vaccinate Adults at www.immunize.org/va.

To receive direct notification when new issues are published, subscribe at www.immunize.org/subscribe.  On this page, you can also subscribe to IAC’s free weekly email news service, IAC Express, which keeps you up to date on immunization news between issues of IAC’s periodicals.

PQA Endorses Two New Performance Measures

Springfield, VA - June 7, 2013 -  PQA announced the endorsement by its membership of two new performance measures during a vote on May 29th at the PQA Annual Meeting & Best Practices Forum.  The new measures are:  Adherence to Non-Warfarin Oral Anticoagulants Antipsychotic Use in Children Under 5 Years Old The measure, Adherence to Non-Warfarin Oral Anticoagulants, addresses the percentage of patients 18 years and older who met the Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) threshold of 80 percent during the measurement period for the non-warfarin oral anticoagulants apixaban, dabigatran and rivaroxaban.  Adherence to all anticoagulants is important to decrease risk of stroke, pulmonary embolism and DVT.  This measure addresses an important safety concern because adherence to these new drugs cannot be monitored through a surrogate lab value, such as INR.  The half-life of these medications is short (in comparison to warfarin), so adherence to these non-warfarin anticoagulants may be more critical to monitor.