- Email: [email protected]
Management
(To give readers an idea of what is on the minds of their colleagues, we have culled the following comments from the large number of responses recently received from the regular APhA Suggestion Box feature in Pharmacy Weekly.) Continuing Education
It would be a great idea to enable members to satisfy continuing education requirements through American Pharmacy at no additional cost. I have been an APhA member since January 1949. I am physically unable to chase all over my state for these courses, and they cost money. I have been retired several years. My state board of registration ($50 per year) will not give me registration without these courses, even though I am retired. It is not fair. -Anonymous
(Editor's Note) This issue of American Pharmacy inaugurates a four-part continuing education series designed to assist pharmacists in aiding the diabetic patient .. Over the course of the year, we WIll feature additional CE series on topics of prime interest to practitioners. Third Party
Changes must be made in third party payment schedules. A $3 payment is simply not enough when dispensing $100 worth of prescriptions. If community pharmacy is to survive a . . ' mInImum fee and percentage mark-up system must be adopted. -Anonymous
(Editor's Note) APhA's blue-ribbon Commission on Third Party Payments held a series of regional hearings over the course of 1985 to solicit pharmacist comment and suggestions on important third party issues. The Commission is scheduled to present its final report and recommendations in March at the 1986 APhA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
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"New Look"
I like the "new look" of APhA. The weekly newsletter is good and the monthly journals are excellent. Keep including "Drug News" in every issue of American Pharmacy. It is useful knowledge. -Norristown, PA Polygraph Tests
I would like to commend APhA for the stand it took on the polygraph issue. In addition to being unconstitutional, the polygraph is dehumanizing, unprofessional, and completely intolerable. Another issue to be addressed is innocuous, but is actually a written polygraph. In addition to the previously stated objections, it is deceptive and misleading. It must be outlawed. -Detroit, MI Patient Information
I suggest we share innovative methods in giving patients drug information through American Pharmacy through: 1) Face to face consultation in room, window, or cubicle. 2) Handouts. 3) Bulletin board postings. 4) Replay of recorded information when patient waits for prescription filling (and video tape viewing). 5) Reading drug information of the most common drugs on spindle. 6) Use of other written material on table in waiting area (magazines, journals, pamphlets, etc.) -Waco, TX
time let's see "Dang Ng," "Donna Jackson," "Carlos Jimenez," and "Ali Patel." -Camarillo, CA Drug Samples
Finally the answer to drug samples-discontinue their manufacture and make trial drugs a vailable on a complimentary prescription program. If the doctor wants to sample, let him write a "complimentary" prescription: the pharmacist would fill it at free or no charge depending on the manufacturer, and the customer will be receiving their medication. The system uses doctor, patient, and pharmacist-which is the way it is supposed to be. Let's keep the samples out of the pharmacy and the prescription in the pharmacy.
-Clear Lake, IA (Editor's Note) In recent Congressional testimony, APhA called for a ban on drug sampling as currently practiced in this country, and recommended a Trial Prescription Order program which would provide patients with drugs dispensed in small, starter dose quantities, offered at no product cost to the patient, and provided for the purpose of determining the value of the drug's effects prior to dispensing of the remaining therapeutic course.
Melting Pot
From time to time I see in American Pharmacy fictional pharmacist names such as "Mark Anderson," "William Black," or "Sharon Johnson." However, these names only perpetuate a stereotype and do not reflect the melting pot of our great nation and profession. Show a little imagination in creating some of these names. Next
American Pharmacy Vol. NS26, No.1, January 198i
It would be a great idea to enable members to satisfy continuing education requirements through American Pharmacy at no additional cost. I have been an APhA member since January 1949. I am physically unable to chase all over my state for these courses, and they cost money. I have been retired several years. My state board of registration ($50 per year) will not give me registration without these courses, even though I am retired. It is not fair. -Anonymous
(Editor's Note) This issue of American Pharmacy inaugurates a four-part continuing education series designed to assist pharmacists in aiding the diabetic patient .. Over the course of the year, we WIll feature additional CE series on topics of prime interest to practitioners. Third Party
Changes must be made in third party payment schedules. A $3 payment is simply not enough when dispensing $100 worth of prescriptions. If community pharmacy is to survive a . . ' mInImum fee and percentage mark-up system must be adopted. -Anonymous
(Editor's Note) APhA's blue-ribbon Commission on Third Party Payments held a series of regional hearings over the course of 1985 to solicit pharmacist comment and suggestions on important third party issues. The Commission is scheduled to present its final report and recommendations in March at the 1986 APhA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
4
"New Look"
I like the "new look" of APhA. The weekly newsletter is good and the monthly journals are excellent. Keep including "Drug News" in every issue of American Pharmacy. It is useful knowledge. -Norristown, PA Polygraph Tests
I would like to commend APhA for the stand it took on the polygraph issue. In addition to being unconstitutional, the polygraph is dehumanizing, unprofessional, and completely intolerable. Another issue to be addressed is innocuous, but is actually a written polygraph. In addition to the previously stated objections, it is deceptive and misleading. It must be outlawed. -Detroit, MI Patient Information
I suggest we share innovative methods in giving patients drug information through American Pharmacy through: 1) Face to face consultation in room, window, or cubicle. 2) Handouts. 3) Bulletin board postings. 4) Replay of recorded information when patient waits for prescription filling (and video tape viewing). 5) Reading drug information of the most common drugs on spindle. 6) Use of other written material on table in waiting area (magazines, journals, pamphlets, etc.) -Waco, TX
time let's see "Dang Ng," "Donna Jackson," "Carlos Jimenez," and "Ali Patel." -Camarillo, CA Drug Samples
Finally the answer to drug samples-discontinue their manufacture and make trial drugs a vailable on a complimentary prescription program. If the doctor wants to sample, let him write a "complimentary" prescription: the pharmacist would fill it at free or no charge depending on the manufacturer, and the customer will be receiving their medication. The system uses doctor, patient, and pharmacist-which is the way it is supposed to be. Let's keep the samples out of the pharmacy and the prescription in the pharmacy.
-Clear Lake, IA (Editor's Note) In recent Congressional testimony, APhA called for a ban on drug sampling as currently practiced in this country, and recommended a Trial Prescription Order program which would provide patients with drugs dispensed in small, starter dose quantities, offered at no product cost to the patient, and provided for the purpose of determining the value of the drug's effects prior to dispensing of the remaining therapeutic course.
Melting Pot
From time to time I see in American Pharmacy fictional pharmacist names such as "Mark Anderson," "William Black," or "Sharon Johnson." However, these names only perpetuate a stereotype and do not reflect the melting pot of our great nation and profession. Show a little imagination in creating some of these names. Next
American Pharmacy Vol. NS26, No.1, January 198i