G T Schumock

..The US Food and Drug Administration has issued safety alerts about leukotriene receptor-modifying agents and suicidality/suicide, but because these were based on case reports, there is controversy about the association...

..Until then, when prescribing LTMAs, clinicians should consider the potential for suicide and monitor patients who may be at elevated risk carefully for suicidal ideation or psychiatric symptoms associated with suicidal behaviour...

..The objective of this study was to examine health care costs and utilization and the risks of dialysis or mortality among diabetic predialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with and without secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT)...

..The objective of this study was to examine healthcare costs and utilization, and the risks of dialysis or mortality, among pre-dialysis CKD patients with and without SHPT...

..To analyze, from a payer perspective, the net pharmaceutical and medical costs of prescribing divalproex sodium extended-release (DVPX-ER) versus valproic acid (VPA) in patients with bipolar disorder...

..Renal osteodystrophy is a key cause of fractures in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD)...

..An overview of the emerging field of comparative effectiveness research (CER) and its relevance to pharmacists and pharmacy-based decision-makers is provided...

..As such, these drugs may be amenable to the use of prescribing guidelines. However, relatively little has been published on the effect of such guidelines on clinical outcomes or costs of care...

..Pharmacy managers perceived these technologies to have resulted in a reduction in the rate of medication errors in respondent hospitals...

..Drug spending can be controlled by: Understanding the sources of drug cost Improving use of drug formularies Using clinical pharmacists to improve prescribing behavior...

..Employee vacancy rates in pharmacy departments were high in 2001, especially among pharmacist positions, but were lower than those reported for the general population of hospitals...

..Policies to promote alternatives to LMWHs were reported by 18% of the respondents. A multihospital survey showed that many hospitals wanted but relatively few had prescribing guidelines for LMWHs...

..Knowledge of these differences could have importance in predicting the effectiveness of strategies designed to influence drug use in this setting...

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..To develop a prioritized list of individual drugs for which future research regarding off-label uses is warranted...

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..Future cost-effectiveness studies of medications such as pegfilgrastim should attempt to capture the societal perspective by incorporating productivity-related costs and using base-case rates of FN reported in the literature...

..This integrated efficiency evaluation system is transferable to other hospital pharmacy systems, thereby offering decision makers a better way of measuring, controlling and improving hospital pharmacy efficiency...

..Our objective was to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of regimens containing tiotropium bromide vs other medication regimens for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in real-world clinical settings...

..To examine long-term changes in the U.S. pharmacist labor market across states...

..These costs have not been previously examined. This study provides a decision analytic model to assess the net costs of using flavocoxid for OA from a Medicare perspective...

..CONCLUSION: Within the model's assumptions, LMWH offers a novel, convenient, and economical solution to the problem of peri-procedure anticoagulation for elective colonoscopy...

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..This information may be of value in designing programs to alter medication use...

..More favorable opinions were expressed for situations in which imported drugs would be channeled through U.S. pharmacies...

..This suggests a need for continued vigilance and efficient strategies for dissemination of information about ADRs associated with cancer drugs...

..To improve our understanding of the burden of AE-COPD and to ensure that quality of care initiatives are not misdirected, a validated approach to identifying patients hospitalized for AE-COPD is needed...

..It is unclear to what extent hospitals use guidelines or protocols in treating acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) and whether nesiritide is included in these guidelines or protocols...

..This is expected to greatly impact the practice of outpatient oncology nationwide...

..CONCLUSIONS: The process by which these guidelines were developed, plus the final set of guidelines, may be useful to hospitals and healthcare systems contemplating or engaged in a similar effort with this class of drugs...

..In this article, we describe a process for involving experts and stakeholders in identifying and prioritizing CER studies, as illustrated by our experience in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)...

..CONCLUSION: A survey of community hospitals indicated that although most engaged in productivity monitoring, systems for such measurement often failed to capture all relevant clinical workload data...

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..Affordable programs that provide reimbursement for medical and nonmedical costs incurred following a diagnosis of breast cancer should be developed, especially for lower income women...

..While much of the evidence for CPSs has been conducted in the hospital setting, in the future, CPS expansion will occur in ambulatory care settings and will be benefited by healthcare reform efforts...

..Our findings may have broad applicability because a 2005 Medicare initiative will provide the VA electronic medical record system as a free benefit to all US physicians...

..No data exist that demonstrate the impact of comprehensive acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) treatment guidelines on clinical and economic outcomes in hospitalized patients with this condition...

..Clinics that are proactive and redesign their patient care services to consider emerging anticoagulant agents will be more likely to remain relevant and viable...

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..Consequently, hospitals struggling with the treatment of ADHF may find these guidelines and the process by which they were developed useful...

..The comparison of health-system-specific data and trends with the national information presented in this article may provide a useful context when presenting institutional drug costs to senior management...

..Drug expenditure trends in 2005 and 2006, projected drug expenditures for 2007, and factors likely to influence drug costs are discussed...

..These data may be useful to physicians faced with concerns over clinical and economic factors associated with CSF use as adjunct therapy for older persons with AML...

..Drug expenditure trends in 2006 and 2007, projected drug expenditures by setting for 2008, and factors likely to influence drug expenditures are discussed...