Drugs and prescribing

1,242 articles · Since 2007

Articles, page 25

How long can high drug prices last?

May 20, 2017May 20, 20176

“Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered,” the saying goes. And so may it prove to be true for the pharmaceutical industry. Three articles, all published May 3, illustrate the greed and egregious pricing by certain drug companies that are…

“Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered,” the saying goes. And so may it prove to be true for the pharmaceutical industry.

Three articles, all published May 3, illustrate the greed and egregious pricing by certain drug companies that are gaining public recognition and scrutiny.

As an example, Marathon invested $370,000 to obtain the license for the data on “deflazacort,” a steroid available for about $1,200 a year in the United Kingdom. …

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How long can high drug prices last?

Here’s what opioid guidelines fail to mention

Cynthia Kay, MD & Joanne Bernstein, MD

May 19, 2017May 19, 20173

Opioids have become so closely associated with chronic pain that it is nearly impossible to talk about one without the other. When we look back just five years ago, when we were still in residency, news stories about chronic pain and opioid overdoses were not commonplace. Now, we find ourselves almost desensitized to each new opioid headline. We are general internists, primary care providers and junior faculty. We practice at …

Opioid prescribing: Doctors need to do a better job, but they can’t do it alone

Fred N. Pelzman, MD

May 18, 2017May 18, 2017

I recently took a three hour online course on something I learned to do when I was a medical student. And I thought it was something I had been doing fairly well for the past 20 years. New regulations have…

I recently took a three hour online course on something I learned to do when I was a medical student.

And I thought it was something I had been doing fairly well for the past 20 years.

New regulations have come down requiring all practitioners to take a CME-certified course on safe and effective management of opiates for acute and chronic pain. This has clearly …

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We should not ask the FDA to reduce its oversight of medication

Janice Boughton, MD

May 15, 2017May 15, 20177

There is enthusiasm in politics about reducing regulation to stimulate creativity and economic growth. Maybe. But reduction in oversight of medication and medical devices by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will probably lead to a proliferation of expensive potions…

There is enthusiasm in politics about reducing regulation to stimulate creativity and economic growth.

Maybe. But reduction in oversight of medication and medical devices by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will probably lead to a proliferation of expensive potions and gadgets that don’t actually help.

The New England Journal of Medicine published an article detailing the near miss associated with an injectable monoclonal antibody for Alzheimer’s disease. …

The elderly need hired professionals to administer their medications

Steven Reznick, MD

May 9, 2017May 9, 20177

One of the most challenging and difficult parts of my professional day is trying to determine if my patients are actually taking their as prescribed. I ask my patients to bring their medications to each visit in the original pill…

One of the most challenging and difficult parts of my professional day is trying to determine if my patients are actually taking their as prescribed.

I ask my patients to bring their medications to each visit in the original pill bottles, and we count pills. I ask them to bring their medication lists as well, and we go through the time-consuming practice of reviewing each medication against the prescribing date and …

If pharmaceutical companies don’t restrain themselves, someone else will

Peter Ubel, MD

May 7, 2017May 7, 20173

Imagine that you are gasping for breath, literally on the verge of death. Then someone injects you with a medicine and -- miracle! -- you are perfectly healthy again. Would you pay $300 for that injection? The treatment is epinephrine;…

Imagine that you are gasping for breath, literally on the verge of death. Then someone injects you with a medicine and — miracle! — you are perfectly healthy again.

Would you pay $300 for that injection?

The treatment is epinephrine; your illness was a life-threatening allergy. And that $300 price? That reflects a six-fold increase from a couple of years ago. It’s one thing for medications to be …

How should opioids be prescribed?

Linda Girgis, MD

May 5, 2017May 5, 20175

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. in the midst of a major public health crisis regarding the misuse of opioid medications.| Today, more people die of overdoses related to the use of opioids…

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. in the midst of a major public health crisis regarding the misuse of opioid medications.|

Today, more people die of overdoses related to the use of opioids than any other drug or medication. In fact, opioid deaths (including the use of heroin) have quadrupled since 1999. Approximately 650,000 prescriptions are written for opioid medications every day in the …

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How should opioids be prescribed?

It is not a great time to be a pharmaceutical rep

Martha Rosenberg

April 24, 2017Apr 24, 201724

More than a decade ago, the job of the pharmaceutical rep was enviable. Direct-to-consumer advertising pre-sold many drugs so doctors already knew about them. Medical offices welcomed the reps who were usually physically attractive and brought lunch. In fact, reps…

By 2011 thanks to drug safety scandals and new methods of marketing, the bloom had fallen off the pharma …

How micropractices can help the opioid crisis

Mark Leeds, DO

April 9, 2017Apr 9, 20179

A confluence of events has occurred in the United States that could help to save the lives of many patients as well as the lives and careers of many physicians. The solution is to apply the use of micropractices to address the current opioid addiction crisis. A micropractice is a small medical practice that is run efficiently to keep overhead low and put the patient first. The patient is given …

Surviving opioids in the fentanyl era

Martha Bebinger

April 8, 2017Apr 8, 2017

There’s a clear culprit in the rising drug overdose death count in Massachusetts — the synthetic opioid fentanyl. More powerful and more deadly than heroin, fentanyl has sparked a new set of survival rules among people who abuse opioids. About…

About 75 percent of the state’s men and women who died after an unintentional overdose last year had fentanyl in their system, up from 57 percent in 2015. It’s a pattern cities …

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Surviving opioids in the fentanyl era

Drugs shouldn’t be this expensive

Michael Kirsch, MD

April 7, 2017Apr 7, 201712

Why are the costs of prescription drugs so high? While I have prescribed thousands of them, I can’t offer an intelligent answer to this inquiry. Of course, all the players in this game — the pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers, insurance companies, consumer activists and the government — offer their own bromides, where does the truth lie?

While I don’t fully understand it, and I don’t know how to fix it, …

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Drugs shouldn’t be this expensive

The pitfalls of prior authorization for prescription drugs

American College of Physicians & Yul Ejnes, MD

March 29, 2017Mar 29, 20177

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. One of the things that I dread the most about January 1 is that it’s the start of “prior authorization (PA) season” for prescription medications. It is time…

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

One of the things that I dread the most about January 1 is that it’s the start of “prior authorization (PA) season” for prescription medications. It is time consuming and frustrating, plus it often jeopardizes patient safety and quality of care.

A recent Viewpoint in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) describes PA programs, …

The feds say restrict opioid use. Now what?

Cindy Perlin, LCSW

March 15, 2017Mar 15, 201738

The federal government has declared, through its major health policy agencies, that the number of pain patients on opioids and the dosages they are on should be severely restricted. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), Veteran’s Administration (VA) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have all issued new guidelines within the past year to that effect. Private insurers are following suit, in many cases refusing to pay for …

Please don’t mix herbal supplements with cancer treatments

Don S. Dizon, MD

March 6, 2017Mar 6, 20172

One of the questions that I face (and which I am certain many of us do) concerns the use of alternative therapies. Iron chelation therapy, high-dose vitamin C infusions, Chinese herbs — interest in these therapies and others like them are driven by word-of-mouth (“a friend of a friend”), claims on websites and patients curiosity. Cancer is …

Did doctors who cared too much lead to the opioid epidemic?

Edwin Leap, MD

March 2, 2017Mar 2, 20179

Sometimes medicine offers us wonderful, almost unimaginable gifts. Heart attacks that were devastating, life-altering events a few decades ago are now treated with expediency and skill that our grandparents couldn’t imagine. A couple of days pass, and the victim is home with stents in occluded arteries and directions to modify activity and diet. Pneumonia, once the “old person’s

friend” (so called because it took the aged to eternity), is far less …

We have a vaccine for six cancers. Why are less than half of kids getting it?

Electra D. Paskett, PhD

February 27, 2017Feb 27, 20172

Early in our careers, few of us imagined a vaccine could one day prevent cancer. Now there is a vaccine that keeps the risk of developing six Human Papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers at bay, but adoption of it has been slow…

Although it’s been available for more than a decade, as of 2014 only 40 percent of girls had received the full three doses of the …

The exploding cost of prescription drugs

Homayoun L. Daneschvar, MD

February 25, 2017Feb 25, 2017

The amount of prescribed medications and the number of individuals taking them are increasing rapidly. The share of Americans taking one or more prescription drugs has risen among all age groups. According to the IMS Health Study, the total spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. reached $310 billion in 2015. This is almost three times more than total drug expenditures in the year 2000. It is forecasted that the …

The EpiPen debacle may be the shot heard around the world

Niran S. Al-Agba, MD

February 24, 2017Feb 24, 20178

The Mylan EpiPen debacle may have inadvertently weakened the grip of big pharma on U.S. lawmakers. Recently, a bill proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders was narrowly rejected by a vote of 52 to 46. Unexpectedly, 12 Republicans and 1 Independent voted with Senator Sanders in favor of allowing pharmacists and distributors to import cheaper prescription drugs from foreign countries. The winds of change may finally blow in a bipartisan direction. …

We need to pay better attention to medication side effects

Marlene Beggelman, MD

February 22, 2017Feb 22, 201729

Years ago, after I suffered a deep personal loss, my doctor prescribed Prozac, and I joined the millions of Americans who have taken an antidepressant. A few weeks later, I had my first panic attack — heart racing, sweating profusely, gasping for breath — sensations of terror normally reserved for life-threatening events. Attacks continued every half-hour and were so incapacitating that I could not even leave my house. My doctors …

The patent protection in the drug industry is out of control. Here’s why.

Robert Pearl, MD

February 21, 2017Feb 21, 20175

In the United States, the patent protection process — as it relates to the drug industry — has been distorted by the political system, intense lobbying and large campaign contributions. The result has been pricing contrary to the greater good…

Patents originated in ancient Greece. This legal protection assumed greater importance in 15th-Century Venice as a means to protect the nation-state’s glassblowing industry. The first patent granted in …

Drugs and prescribing

Articles, page 25

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