Anyone who runs a business should have a basic understanding of accounting. And healthcare professionals are no exception. Whether you work in an office, a pharmacy, or a hospital, all healthcare facilities must keep up with their finances. Here, we’ll go over some accounting basics so you can feel more confident about speaking with your accounting teams and understanding the financial statements they produce for you.

The U.S. has by far the highest per capita healthcare spending in the world, with no signs of slowing down. In 2020, healthcare spending in the U.S. reached $4.1 trillion, or $12,530 for every person in the country. Medicare and Medicaid expenditures collectively made up 36% of that cost, or $4,510 per capita. That’s nearly the same as the 2019 per capita spending of the U.K. ($4,582) and Finland ($4,450) both of which insure every resident of the country. Yet Medicare and Medicaid combined only insure about 40% Americans.

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who aren’t hospitalized or in nursing facilities. This series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to view our own system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. So far, we’ve explored the practice of pharmacy in Japan, Finland, Australia, Switzerland, England, and the United Arab Emirates. In this post, we’ll look at pharmacy practice in Iran, a health system rarely studied by Americans. Iran’s approach to regulation, pharmacy practice, and education, though, is surprisingly quite similar to that of the U.S.

In the U.S., antitrust laws grew out of growing consolidation and control of entire industries by single companies in the 1800s. Prices could be fixed by these companies with no control or competition to stop them, and, as a result, prices skyrocketed. After becoming president in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt began a campaign to break up monopolies, and, today, there are both federal and state antitrust laws in place to protect consumers and promote competition.

Despite the U.S. having drug utilization similar to other developed nations, its high drug prices have resulted in the highest prescription drug spending in the world. In fact, a widely cited report from the Rand Corporation found that our prices averaged 256% of those seen in 32 other countries included in the study. For branded medications, that cost difference jumped to 344%. To the public and also to much of the healthcare community, drug pricing is shrouded in mystery. The complexity of the U.S. system, combined with the fact that major players in the system negotiate contracts behind closed doors, makes unraveling that mystery challenging.

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who aren’t hospitalized or in nursing facilities. This series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to view our own system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. So far, we’ve explored the practice of pharmacy in Japan, Finland, Australia, Switzerland, and England. In this post, we’ll look at our first Middle Eastern country: the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Insurance rejections are an unfortunate but necessary part of daily practice for pharmacists and providers alike. While rejections are an important cost-containment tool for payers, they can add a significant administrative burden for medical offices. Understanding insurance rejections can help offices improve workflow and communication, saving staff time and ensuring patients get the medications they need. In this article, we’ll look at the most common types of medication-related insurance rejections and discuss ways providers and pharmacists can handle them.

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who aren’t hospitalized or in nursing facilities. This series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to view our own system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. We’ve crossed the globe, covering countries as diverse as Japan, Australia, and Switzerland.

Ideas and execution to identify and serve the most vulnerable, featuring: Alex Evans, Medical Writer, Pharmacy Project Manager, Ascension Florida Pam Toney, Executive Director, Bluffton Jasper Volunteers in Medicine Taylor Reed, Executive Director, Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who aren’t hospitalized or in nursing facilities. This series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to view our own system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. So far, we’ve covered Japan, Finland, and Australia. Today, we continue this series by exploring the community pharmacy practice of Switzerland.

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who are not hospitalized or in nursing facilities, and this series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. This gives us the opportunity to view the American pharmacy system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. So far, we have looked at Japan’s pharmacy system as well as that of Finland. In this post, we’ll look at one of the most-studied healthcare systems from an American perspective: Australia’s.

The history of U.S. pharmacy is as fascinating as that of any other facet of medicine. Let’s look back a few centuries and find our way to the modern era.

Medication adherence is often defined as a patient taking at least 80% of their medications for most diseases. For patients with a chronic disease, like diabetes, adherence rates hover around 50% to 60%. Unfortunately, for some diseases, even 80% adherence might not be enough. Older HIV antiretrovirals, for example, required adherence rates at or above 95%. In the U.S., medication nonadherence has been estimated to lead to 125,000 avoidable deaths and $100 billion in avoidable healthcare costs annually. We’ll look at some of the most common barriers to adherence and offer tips to overcome them, pulling from outside sources and from my own experience as a practicing pharmacist.

Adventure-seeking healthcare professionals looking for the chance to live overseas might initially assume that the primary path to doing so is by obtaining their professional licensure in another country. While this can be a great path, it can also be difficult, especially if the country’s main language is not your native tongue.

Community pharmacies are those that dispense medications to patients who aren’t hospitalized or in nursing facilities. This series explores how community pharmacy practice differs around the world. In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to view our own system in a new light and potentially find opportunities for improvement. In the first post of this series, we looked at community pharmacy practice in Japan.

There is often a gap between the laws taught in pharmacy schools and the legal knowledge you need to practice pharmacy. Along the way, it is very possible for great pharmacists to make mistakes and unknowingly break the law or not follow national guidelines for practice. In this post, we’ll look at important laws and guidelines that may not have been taught in your pharmacy school but that are essential for you in order to succeed as a practicing pharmacist.

Learning to navigate the complex processes of insurance companies is one of the biggest hurdles to gaining confidence as a new pharmacist, since even experienced pharmacists can have difficulty with insurance rejections and payments. This post will serve as a sort of crash-course guide to prescription drug insurance. You can find even more information on this subject via CE-PRN.

Society depends on licensed professionals for tasks that require specialized education and training. This includes doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, along with builders, educators, pilots, and many others. Licensing is a mechanism to ensure competency — and in most cases written exams are an important part of that process. A recent incident involving the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX) has shaken the pharmacy community and called attention to the importance of exam integrity. It is imperative not only for test takers, but also for the general public’s health, that the integrity of exams like this one is maintained.

Doctors, nurses, physician associates, and other healthcare providers (HCPs) work hard to make sure their patients get the care they need, and that includes ensuring they receive their medications. Yet, despite their best efforts, too often patients walk away from the pharmacy counter without their prescriptions. In this post, we’ll look at all the ways you can help your patients navigate the costs of their prescription. We’ll also look at insurance and review patient assistance programs, free trials, copay cards, and other ways to help the underinsured as well as the uninsured.

Pharmacists play a critical (if often underappreciated) role in the public health of the country, providing a range of services beyond dispensing medication. While this hasn’t always been the case, pharmacy practice and education have continually evolved to meet the needs of the public. Pharmacy is not a stagnant profession, and it is up to the current generation of pharmacists to expand into new practice models. Let’s look at where pharmacy practice has been, its modern role in public health, and the impact it might have in the future.