Fundamentals of Pharmacy BUS 345

Questions for 11/28 1.        What marketing tactics do you use to get your name out to the public? Do you heavily invest in marketing or is most of your marketing free such as word of mouth? 2.        Do you use Google Business or Yelp!? 3.        What percentage of your sales are cash vs. Medicare/insurance? Ethically speaking if a product is covered through their Medicare/ insurance program, do you always suggest that. Because obviously you want that cash transaction, but the customer would save money going through their insurance, and you will get paid, it might just take longer and obviously not cash. 4.        How much of your business is B2B vs. end consumer? 5.        What is your protocol with dealing with sales reps? 6.        What are some of the newest technological advances you’ve see...

What I learned week 13 The posted readings this week were about brand name pharmaceuticals. I read the industry report as well as did a little more research into the current landscape of the brand name pharmaceutical industry, as well as what the future holds.             I took my curiosity to the web and found a recent article, as recent as November 24 th discussing how the Trump administration is taking on drug prices. Trump wants to bring the hammer down on high drug prices, accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder.” What’s in discussion is an idea to pass prescription drug rebates directly to seniors; like what Medicare reimburses hospitals for certain drugs, it’s the same concept. It’s no surprise that there are more and more generic drugs coming to market and competition is high for brand name pharmaceuticals. “ Last week, the agency proposed a more than 700-page rule targeted at out-of-pocket ...

What I learned week 12 Dr. Kahn gave us an introduction to the different government drug payments plans such as Medicare Parts B&D; Medicaid and the VA system. She also reinforced our knowledge of pharmacy benefit managers, and P&T committees, which we have discussed before with other speakers and learned upon in several readings. Dr. Kahn began the discussion talking about risk which I thought was very interesting. There are two types of risk, pure and speculative. Pure risk is a category of risk in which loss is the only possible outcome, such as a fire. Then there is speculative risk, which is a category of risk where there is a chance of gain as well as loss; such as gambling or starting a new business. Thus, pure risk is insurable to an extent whereas speculative risk is not insurable. You cannot buy insurance before you gamble to protect your money, it doesn’t work like that. Dr. Kahn started the conversation with these two definitions to further elaborate on the ...

What I learned week 11 Unfortunately, I was not able to attend Tuesdays speaker for I had a work obligation and there were no assigned readings. I was however at Mina Hernandez’s discussion about the intersection of insurance and healthcare. Mina works at Hanover Insurance as an underwriter and developer of their health care section. There are four main categories in which they provide insurance to. There are medical devices, pharmaceuticals, digital health and contract research. This really opened my eyes because when I think of healthcare I mainly think of just drugs and medical devices, and that’s really all we’ve talked about so far, so it’s interesting to dive into these two unique aspects of the healthcare world. Especially digital health because we live in such a technology driven world that digital health is all around us. The broad scope of digital health includes categories such as mobile health i.e. cellphone fitness apps, health information technology, wearable devi...

1. "China and India have the largest number of diabetes sufferers in the world, at around 110 million and 69 million, respectively."  Why do India and China have the largest amount of rates when Diabetes is a lifestyle diseases and associated with poor diets and overweight individuals." 2. How are life science companies adjusting towards the shift from a profit driven system to a value-driven care system? 3. Can property and casualty insurers predict natural disasters? Isn't it unethical that they are hoping these occur for profit. Wouldn't this also mean they wouldn't be keen to global warming initiatives?

What I learned week 10 This week Dr. Baker talked to us about the changing pharmaceutical industry focusing on the law aspects. Dr. Baker is a pharmacist he also has a law degree, so he has an inside perspective on how the law implications apply to pharmacy. It’s interesting to me because out of all the healthcare providers, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, pharmacy techs etc. pharmacists are the most educated on law. They are the only healthcare providers who are required to take a law class for their graduation requirements. Dr. Baker kicked off the discussion by discussing some crucial laws and amendments passed by the U.S government which established rules and regulations for the pharmaceutical industry that we still use today. For example, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment or Prescription Drug Amendment of 1951 (amendment to the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act of 1938). The purpose of this amendment was to standardize what a “drug” is, which thus established the requirements of m...