Melissa Olivadoti, PhD, CMPP

The article emphasizes the importance of medication management for seniors, as forgetting or taking medications incorrectly can have serious health consequences. Here are the key points: *Increased Medication Use: With age, people take more medications, making it harder to track them. *Physical Changes: The body's ability to process medications changes with age, raising potential complications. *Caregiver Role: Family or professional caregivers need to be aware of all medications and their purposes. *Medication Management Tools: Pill organizers and daily charts can help ensure medications are taken correctly. *Following Doctor's Orders: Taking medications exactly as prescribed, including refills and monitoring side effects, is crucial. *Risks of Non-Adherence: Not taking medications correctly can significantly impact health. *Polypharmacy Concerns: When using multiple medications, it's important to be aware of potential drug interactions. Ideally, all prescriptions come from the same pharmacy for better monitoring. *Full Disclosure: It's vital to disclose all medications, even over-the-counter ones, to doctors. *Appropriate Medication: While many medications help seniors live longer, some prescriptions might be unnecessary, especially for those already on multiple medications. *Increased Side Effects: Older adults are more susceptible to medication side effects. *Professional Care: For families struggling to manage medication needs, professional caregivers can provide valuable assistance. *Long-Term Care Planning: LTC insurance can help cover the costs of long-term care, which may be necessary for some seniors. The article highlights the importance of communication, planning, and using the right tools to ensure safe and effective medication management for older adults. Let us know your thoughts about this, feel free to share it in the comments section! Call us! T: (510)-573-0064 A: 5886 Mowry School Rd, Newark CA, 94560 #LongTermCare #MedicationManagement #BetterHealth #Teamwork #TIBPharmacy #NewarkPharmacy #pharmacyservices #longtermcare #LTCPharmacy #HospicePharmacy #EndOfLifeCare #hospicespecialized #ltcspecialized #ltcathome #enteraltherapy #MedicationManagement #PackagingPower #SimplifyYourHealth https://lnkd.in/dZFiGw_p

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How are the cash prices of generic drugs at your local pharmacy being distorted? And how does that distortion allow discount cards to exist? --- Last Thursday, Luke Slindee, Pharm.D. spoke with Stacey Richter on the Relentless Health Value Podcast (link in the comments). They spent less than 30 minutes efficiently answering the question of why the cash prices of #GenericDrugs are obscured, and how that allows discount cards like GoodRx to have a business model. --- As foundational knowledge, you have to understand how PBM contracts are set up with a pharmacy. Most PBM contracts have a "most favored nations" clause that says the PBM will always get the best negotiated price. This means PBMs will never pay a #pharmacy more than their listed cash price (AKA "usual and customary" price), even if the negotiated rate through insurance was a higher reimbursement. Therefore, most pharmacies raise their cash price to be certain it's always higher than the negotiated rates so they don't leave money on the table. --- When patients come in for a prescription without #HealthInsurance, they are quoted the inflated usual and customary price. (Because otherwise the pharmacy would be in violation of their PBM contract). This dynamic creates an opportunity for discount cards like GoodRx--allowing the patient to get the prescription for around what the cash price would've been if the pharmacy didn't have the most favored nations clause in the #PBM contract. However, these discount cards also charge the pharmacy a fee, which can be higher than the profit margin of the prescription! This leaves the patients and pharmacies in a lose-lose situation for those without health insurance or when the cash price would've been cheaper than using the insurance. These conditions are what led to the increase in cash-only pharmacies. --- What could we do to get the generic drug market back to competitive prices? Luke thinks the simplest answer is removing the most favored nations clause from PBM contracts. -PBMs have enough data that they don't need to know the pharmacies usual and customary price -It would allow generic drugs to still be covered by insurance (in contrast to removing coverage for generic drugs completely) -Pharmacies and patients would have the flexibility to use the competitive cash price like in a normal market Simple, but not easy when the losers of this change would be PBMs and the entire discount card industry.

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People Using GLP-1 is 2X More Than 1st Reports 📈 GLP-1 Is Being Used For More Diseases... 🔽 JPMorgan Chase & Co. initially estimated up to 9% of the population, 30M people will be on #GLP1s by 2030. However, this could be low... ⤵ 💊 Drug companies have been finding it hard to get coverage for #Obesity with #insurance but studies are finding #benefits in other #diseases and there are hundreds of millions of Americans who have these... 👇 🔶 Diabetes - 38M people 🔶 Heart Disease - 121M people 🔶 Obesity - 108M people 🔶 Alzheimers - 7M people 🔶 Sleep Apnea - 39M people 🔶 Addiction - 47M people The popular drug is showing benefits in these areas and studies are underway. In fact, a study showed reduction in heart attacks and strokes by 20% which lead to #Medicare getting in the action 🖤 #Medicare recently approved Novo Nordisk Wegovy for #HeartDisease which equates to another 3.6M people (George Kaiser Family Foundation). A LOOK BEHIND THE NUMBERS #JPMorgan assumptions assumes 35% of diabetics using the drug and around 15M obese patients using GLP-1s by 2030. This does NOT take into account; ◼ Medicare ◼ Other Diseases ◼ Self Pay And many more... I am working on new estimates but I can tell you the actual number is more than 2X the original forecast of 7% and 9%... 📰 Look at Medicare... They are estimating coverage of 3.6M Americans on Medicare with Heart Disease and Overweight but there are 10M with Heart Disease and 13.7M are considered Obese and another 1.9M with Diabetes. _____________________________________________ 📌 Bottom Line, more people will be using GLP1's and related Drugs. The side effect of Lean Body Mass Loss will still apply to all even though people will use for different disease reasons. ❓ You Ready To Handle Members On GLP-1s? #WeGovy #Ozempic #Zeapbound #GLP1 #Diseases #MarketGrowth #VS

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Great work by The New York Times uncovering the secret middlemen who have been inflating the prices for prescription drugs. Once again, this just proves my ongoing displeasure and disgust with the healthcare system in the US: it is seriously broken. There is a very small percentage of people who are making ridiculous sums of money in the healthcare industry in this country - hint: it's not the healthcare providers (including the allied health workers). As Dr. Gavin Preston posted on X on 6/22/24: "The only reasonable function of a health insurance company is to pay bills, not manage care. The only reasonable function of an employer is to pay employees and taxes, not manage care. Does anyone else think it's time we look at BEST PRACTICES around the world? I still believe that we need healthcare for ALL, that employers and insurance companies need to come OUT of the equation. Prescription drug costs need to be handled the same across the globe (vs. the price gauging here in the US). If we had healthcare for ALL, and took out the layers and layers of administrative WASTE that insurance companies have created... then healthcare systems and clinicians could be paid reasonable rates for services. No more excessive fees to make up for those who cannot pay - because the #1 cause of bankruptcy in this county is due to healthcare costs that people just cannot pay. Homeowner's insurance doesn't pay for home maintenance, and car insurance doesn't pay for car maintenance. Life insurance doesn't pay to maintain our lives... they are all used when there is an accident or death. SO, for those who have a fear that government-funded healthcare means they won't get care... put a bit more effort into lifestyle medicine approaches to wellness and disease prevention; then you won't need to utilize interventional medicine for sick care as often. It's free to make healthy choices, be physically active, reduce consumption of harmful substances, be mindful and have healthy human connections.

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💭 What are adaptive clinical trials? And are there different kinds? Consultant Jessica Cordes walks us through four types of adaptive trial designs and explains why they might be a good alternative to traditional trial design. #clinicaltrials #clinicalresearch

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