Fundamentals of Pharmacy BUS 345

This week was our final class as well as our final presenter, Beth Schively, Marketing Director of Scapa Healthcare and a graduate of WNE. I’ve heard Beth speak before at a pharmaceutical business luncheon, so I had a little knowledge about what she did and who she worked for. Scapa is a global strategic outsource partner of turn-key, skin friendly adhesive solutions for the healthcare industry. Scapa Healthcare partners with market leaders to design, develop, manufacture and commercialize innovative medical device products. One of Scapa’s competitive advantages is that they will not compete with their partners. Scapa does not sell to the end consumer, they work directly business to business. Their biggest competitor 3M does compete with its partners because they’ll bring their competitors adhesives to market, as well as their own. Both products could be side by side on the shelf. Scapa sees this as a plus for them because their customers feel like they aren’t being cheated. Beth ...

This week, unfortunately Beth Schively was not able to attend Tuesdays session. Luckily though she rescheduled for next Thursday. We did have the presence though of talking with Carolyn Cary who works at Aetna. I know from the beginning I had several questions for Carolyn. For one, since I’m from Connecticut, I was curious if she could shed some light on why Aetna decided to leave Hartford. And for obvious reasons, New York city has more talent and technology. But New York will also provide Aetna with nearly $10 million worth of incentives in the forms of property and sales tax credits, among other benefits. In addition, I know other classmates of mine, as well as myself, had questions about the recent merge Aetna had with CVS. Just a week ago, CVS Caremark bought out Aetna, and Carolyn is excited for the change. Katelyn asked the question, “Will we see more mergers and acquisitions going forward, is this the new trend for companies?” and Carolyn said yes. Companies are looking for b...

This week we had speaker Justin Racine director of marketing and Ecommerce at Geriatric Medical Supply. Justin is a WNE alum with an interesting background. When attending school, Justin was a marketing major, pharmaceutical business didn’t exist yet. While in school Justin worked at a golf course part time to make some money in school. As graduation was getting closer and closer he knew he needed a marketing internship to graduate and working at a gold course wouldn’t cut it. Justin approached his boss and told him that he loved the job he was at but needed a marketing internship. Lucky for Justin, his boss also worked as the general manager of the supply division at a medical supply company and was able to get Justin a marketing internship that would pass for credit. Justin worked at the medical supply location for the summer and was given an objective to create a trifold brochure on the how-to and general information of the use of adult diapers. He did such a good job and everyone...

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...

What I learned week 9 Melissa Mattison told us about her daily operations as a retail pharmacist. I was not aware of all the duties that pharmacists partake in every day. Usually every morning there are trucks to drop off orders that she must be present for. Her job is to make sure what they were billed for was what they received. Simultaneously throughout the day she is looking through several queues. There are problem queues, which mainly consist of insurance rejects, direct physician queues, and personal queues. It’s the pharmacists job to clear out all queues and fix any issues sooner than later. She is also listening to voicemails, checking the DUR’s drug utilization review, and checking if the drug is appropriate for the patient when orders come in. In addition, there are call lists such as adherence calls, that the pharmacist must call the patient and ask if you’ve taken your medication and if you have any questions. Diving deeper into this, there are pros and cons: from th...

“At a minimum, you should review your financial statements annually. You should be comparing your pharmacy’s performance to previous years (to see trends) and to industry standards (to see how you compare in the marketplace). “How up to date do most pharmacies keep their data trend wise, because you should always be looking for trends and growth, not just once a year? Are audits any different with pharmaceutical companies? Does the company have an internal self auditor? Or possibly a third party? Are pharmaceutical companies outstanding balances any larger than other companies because of the middleman with the insurance companies?

What I learned week 8 Courtney Doyle-Campbell This week, Miss Doyle-Campbell educated us about MTM, Medication Therapy Management. MTM is a program that helps you and your doctor make sure that your medications are working to improve your health. A pharmacist or other health professional will give you a comprehensive review of all your medications and talk with you about. MTM also fosters the relationship between physician and pharmacist because their services are depended upon pharmacists working collaboratively with physicians and other healthcare professionals to optimize medication use in accordance with evidence based guidelines. MTM services further demonstrate the push we’ve been seeing in the healthcare realm towards a “patient-oriented” focus. In fact, in the 1950’s pharmacists couldn’t even talk to patients, and it took until the 1960’s engaged in more dispensing as well as patient care.   A pharmacist or other health professional will give you a comprehensive r...