The six-month delay of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation requiring the use of tamper resistant prescription pads for Medicaid beneficiaries is set to end on April 1. Beginning April 1, a prescription pad must meet one of the three following requirements: 1. One or more industry-recognized features designed to prevent unauthorized copying of a completed or blank prescription form; 2.

Commenting on the Department of Health’s announcement on the new national vascular risk screening programme, Sue Sharpe, CEO, PSNC said: “We are very pleased that the government is committed to developing community pharmacy’s role in tackling vascular disease.

Thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries who were previously limited to receiving care in an institutional setting may now be given the option to receive that care in their homes and communities, under a proposed rule published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) gave states a new option to provide home-and-community based services (HCBS) to Medicaid beneficiaries without applying for a demonstration waiver.

According to a study published in JAMA, the risk ofheart attack or cardiovascular death was not reduced when patients wereadministered MC-1 before and for 30 days after coronary artery bypassgraft surgery. MC-1 is a naturally occurring metabolite of vitamin B6that prevents cellular calcium overload and may reduceischemia-reperfusion injury. Researcher John H. Alexander, M.D., M.H.S. (Duke University MedicalCenter, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.

Kidney disease has become a “quiet epidemic” among black communities in Chicago, where “thousands” of black residents are “suffering kidney failure and facing the possibility of blindness, limb amputation, life on dialysis and premature death,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

Acting Indian Health Service Director Robert McSwain and other health officials discussed suicide rates among American Indians and federal funding for IHS at a meeting of tribal and state leaders in Denver last week, Indian Country Today reports. The discussion was part of

A “critical moment has been reached in a 15-year debate in statehouses and in Congress over whether treatment for problems like depression, addiction and schizophrenia should get the same coverage by insurance companies as, say, diabetes, heart disease and cancer,” New York Times columnist Sarah Kershaw writes.

Everyone aged between 40 - 74 offered checks A national programme to identify vulnerability to vascular diseases will prevent up to 9,500 heart attacks and strokes every year and save 2,000 lives, Health Secretary Alan Johnson announced. Collectively, vascular diseases - heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease - affect the lives of more than four million people and kill 170,000 every year.

First evidence that blocking key energy protein kills cancer cellsResearchers in Taiwan report for the first time that blocking a key energy-supplying protein kills cancer cells. The finding, described as the first to test possible medical uses of so-called ATP-synthase inhibitors, may lead to new and more effective anti-cancer medications, according to their report, which is scheduled for the April 4 issue of ACS’ monthly Journal of Proteome Research.

A large community-based registry of patients treated with drug-eluting stents is providing important insight into how long patients with complex coronary artery disease typically stick to their doctors’ orders to take clopidogrel, a drug that prevents unwanted blood clots; why they stop taking the drug; and the long-term consequences of that decision.