Specialty Pharmacy

Home infusion of specialty medications was an outpatient service offered to patients before the pandemic started; however, with COVID-19, home infusion became more important than ever.

Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians are perfectly positioned to help manage patients' transitions of care, according to experts with University of Michigan Health.

This week on Pharmacy Times, there are a number of important topics that will be covered and posted throughout the week.

Since pharmacy is a service business, the required process of communicating and educating customers, working closely with physicians, and navigating relief programs can help patients customers address the problems and stress of receiving a denial by their insurance company.

A variety of methods can be used to create an individualized approach to removing barriers for patients with cancer.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ (ASHP) first annual survey of health-system specialty pharmacies (HSSPs) offered insights into the concerns of specialty pharmacists and provided an opportunity for professionals in the field to outline a potential future for specialty pharmacy.

The pipeline for biosimilar products in the United States includes at least 26 candidates in phase 3 trials for 13 reference therapies.

White continued to discuss how being self-aware, using the right language, modeling behaviors that support belonging, and fostering an environment with psychological safety is the goal as a a health care provider.

A huge cost savings could be generated with the success of a hepatitis C vaccine.

Specialty pharmacists have the expertise and respect necessary to change the health care system while listening to patients’ needs and guiding them through difficult experiences.

The approval is based on results from the phase 2 KEYNOTE-629 trial, which found an objective response rate of 50% in adults with recurrent, metastatic, or locally advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

Researchers found an overall response rate of 29.8% in patients treated with 177Lu-PSMA-617, compared to a 1.7% partial response in the standard of care only arm.

Umbralisib was granted accelerated approval by the FDA for the treatment of select patients with relapsed/refractory marginal zone lymphoma and relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma.

In the ZUMA-5 cohort, 94% of patients achieved a response compared to 50% of patients in the control cohort with an odds ratio of 16.2.

Earlier this year, the FDA granted accelerated approval to tepotinib (Tepmetko, EMD Serono Inc) for the treatment of adults with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer who are harboring MET exon 14 skipping alterations.

Positive topline results have been published from a phase 3 trial assessing the CD-19 directed CAR T cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel as a second-line treatment in adults with relapsed or refractory LBCL.

Specialty medications should not be defined by their cost and should instead be defined by their efficacy.

A lower antibody response found in one-fourth of patients taking methotrexate does not necessarily mean that these patients are not protected against COVID-19.

Common factors that contributed to increased dissatisfaction at work included workflow disruptions, role conflict, quantity of work, organizational culture, and leadership support.

In the United States, endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of female reproductive organs.

The study examining venetoclax and obinutuzumab is in progress and currently recruiting patients who are newly diagnosed with asymptomatic, high-risk CLL.

Dealing with a cancer diagnosis is difficult, but patients with MM have reason to be hopeful. Survival rates are on the rise, and a robust pipeline of promising immunotherapies and novel treatment options are in development.

Pharmacists have always been a vital member of the cancer care team, but the emergence of many new oral therapies is making their role in patient care a more prominent one.

Study results demonstrated consistent benefit across higher and lower-risk patients.

Vast opportunities are opening every day for pharmacists, especially with the upcoming complex biological products that need a lot of therapeutic drug monitoring and fine adjustment of doses.

In PD-L1-positive patients, tislelizumab improved median overall survival by 3.5 months with a 46% decrease in the risk of death compared with chemotherapy.

This is the first approval for secukinumab in a pediatric population in the United States for severe plaque psoriasis.

Understanding how formularies work is essential in the world of pharmacy and knowledge on this topic can help pharmacists to better serve patients.

Lung cancer, the most common cancer type with the highest mortality, can largely be categorized by the genetic mutations that cause it.

Adverse effects from intravenous immunoglobulin tend to be mild, but moderate and severe adverse effects have been observed.