ASHP applauds President Obama for signing an executive order Oct. 31, 2011, taking action on the public health crisis of prescription drug shortages. The President’s order directs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to broaden reporting of potential shortages, expedite regulatory reviews, and increases staffing resources for the FDA’s Drug Shortages Program. The President also expressed support for [...]

WHILE HEALTH-SYSTEM PHARMACISTS FACE a plethora of practice challenges every day, those challenges do not often make the national news. Yet the current struggle with drug shortages has started to do just that. Scores of articles have been published in major newspapers and websites about this crisis, most of them quoting ASHP, including in The Wall Street Journal, USA [...]

You can help ensure that the FDA has the tools it needs to help minimize the impact of drug shortages on patient care by urging your senators to cosponsor the Preserving Access to Life Saving Medications Act (S. 296). This legislation, introduced this week by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Robert Casey (D-Pa.), is an [...]

AS WE GO TO PRESS with the fall 2010 edition of InterSections, nearly 100 ASHP members have just finished an intensive day lobbying congressional representatives and their staff members on issues critical to our profession. It has been a busy, but important, time for ASHP members and the patients they serve. With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, [...]

IMPROVED THERAPEUTIC OUTCOMES… reduced medication errors and adverse drug events… enhanced coordination of care… lowered health care costs… decreased rates of hospital re-admissions… Portions of the new health care legislation being debated in Congress read like a pharmacists’ wish list of sorts. And, as details of the plans under consideration begin to come out, there [...]

NOW THAT THE BRUISING PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN is finally behind us, Americans are wondering how the new realities in Washington, D.C., might affect their daily lives. Whatever your personal political leanings might be, it’s clear that President Obama’s sweeping healthcare reform proposals are some of the most ambitious in decades. His plan focuses on access and [...]