2010- 2011 Newly Installed Board of Directors

Karen Vitacolonna Falk President

Henry Cohen President Elect

Vickie Powell Past President

Bruce Pleskow Treasurer

Ted Friedman Chair, House of Delegates

Gina Garrison VP Public Policy

Stephanie Seyse Chapter Services

Andrew Burgdorf Communications

Pam Weislo Education and Workforce Development

Joe Mislowack Industry Affairs

Nicole Lodise Pharmacy Practice

Kim Zammit Pharmacy Management

NYSCHP 49th Annual Assembly Installation and Awards Banquet: May 7, 2010, Saratoga Hilton, Saratoga Springs, NY Amgen NYSCHP REF Oncology Leadership Award: Amber Ng

NYSCHP REF Awards: Alice Ceacareanu Ashley Whieldon-Woodruff

Corporate Achievement Award: Bill Lewis

Pharmacist of the Year: Frank Sosnowski

Pharmacist Achievement: Karol Wollenburg

Debra B. Feinberg Board of Directors: Leigh Briscoe-Dwyer

Corporate Scholarship Essay: Susan Chang

Pain Management Practice Based Programs proivded ACPE certification in Pain Mangement to 46 attendees.

New techonology: Audience Response Device- still missing 1 device. If you have it please contact Carol at cbizan@nyschp.org. We will assign the devices next year so that we can do a better job of tracking.

Blood drive in memory of Sid Schneps was a HUGE SUCCESS as per the Red Cross: The Red Cross collected 44 donations and their goal was 40, including 8 double red cell units and 13 first-time donors. Look for more information for next year's blood drive at the Turning Stone in Verona, NY.

NYSCHP has upgraded to online CE processing. This is phenomenal news for you and the environment!
Now you can access your CE evaluations and credits 24 x 7! You can complete your evaluations when you want and then receive your credit immediately after you complete the evaluation *No more waiting for your credits!* !
As a member, you have complete access online to view and print your credits 24 x 7, *no worries when you need proof of your credits quickly.* !
And together we will save thousands of trees and contribute to a healthier world for tomorrow!!

How do I get started?!
Go to: http://www.healthsystemce.org/
>Click on: Member Login!
>Enter your user ID: This is the e-mail address you have in your NYSCHP profile. *Be sure to update your e-mail address as necessary.!
>If you do not know your password click on "I forgot my password" and instructions on how to reset your password will be mailed to the e-mail address we have on file. Please remember that passwords and CE codes are case sensitive and please remember to type your password exactly.!
>In order to access the evaluation for the program and receive credit you need the code the presenter gave you during the educational program. Again this password is case sensitive!

>Lets get started! Thank you

Partnership and collaboration is behind the innovations and patient safety initiative at Montefiore Medical Center. A new program was developed by investigational pharmacist, Pragna Patel, PharmD, and Nurse Practitioner Una Hopkins, MSN,APRN-BC. This program was entitled Medication Therapy Management (MTM), and has prevented potentially life-threatening Medication errors. This was a unique program and believed to be the only one of its kind in the Northeast. With the rise in availability and increasing use of oral antineoplastic agents, adherence to prescribed regimens has become an increasingly important issue in oncology. The complexity of cancer drug regimens challenges patients. There are numerous concerns related to oral antineoplastic drug management, including adherence, patient safety, adverse effect management, cost, communication and medication errors. As per the IOM report-To Err is Human, the number and types of avoidable medication errors are burdensome and costly to the healthcare system. The increased use of Oral Chemotherapeutic drugs is one risk factor for a patient to be referred at MTM clinic. Other risk factors include 3 or more co-morbidities, 5 or more concomitant medications, or advanced age. This partnership is formulated on 3 P’s Patient, Pharmacist, and Provider. Our goal was to personalize patient care and increase patient safety through this collaborative model. During an MTM session, the team identified and corrected problems such as drug interactions, helped patients understand and organize their medications. The process assists patients by placing them in the best position to adhere to their prescribed regimens and stay as healthy as possible. Pragna Patel

Related Links, http:// www.montefiore.org http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=
1938808488&pt=Y

Advisers to FDA want the agency to tighten the requirements for proving the bioequivalence of generic and innovator drugs when the medications have a so-called narrow therapeutic index (NTI).

At an April 13 meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland, the 13 voting members of FDA's Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Science and Clinical Pharmacology unanimously agreed that NTI drugs require stricter bioequivalence standards than other medications.

FDA convened the meeting to seek input on whether to revise the bioequivalence criteria for drugs that might produce adverse consequences for patients who receive different versions of what should be the same medication.

Read more at the link below.

Thirty-three health-system pharmacists have been given the title “Fellow” by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) in recognition of the excellence they have achieved in pharmacy practice. The 2010 Fellows will be honored on Tuesday, June 8, 2010, during the ASHP Summer Meeting in Tampa, FL.

For more info, click on the link below.

Medicare Advantage provider XLHealth has turned to the University of Maryland (UMd) School of Pharmacy to train the company's pharmacists to provide medication therapy management (MTM) services for patients with serious chronic conditions.

Once trained, XLHealth's pharmacists conduct in-depth reviews of the medication regimens with patients over the telephone, a process that takes about 40 minutes, according to the company. The pharmacists then work with the patients' health care providers to optimize medication regimens, said Andrea Hershey, vice president of pharmacy at the Baltimore-based company.

Read more at the link below.

Even though they often remain unseen, hospital pharmacists are a critical part of quality care for hospitalized patients. Typical hospital pharmacies are busy places filled with pharmacists dedicated to ensuring patient safety despite the growing complexity of the medications they dispense. For this reason, pharmacists at some hospitals, such as Sentara Heart Hospital in Norfolk, Va., have emerged from the pharmacy and are working directly in hospital units. Each day, unit pharmacists review every medication sent from the central pharmacy. They also enter new physician orders into an electronic ordering system. These procedures allow the pharmacist to prevent possible drug interactions and spot conflicts between patients' latest lab results and their current medication regimens.

ASHP's 2010 Summer Meeting and Exhibition, which will be held from June 6 to June 9 in Tampa, Fla., will host a number of sessions and workshops including series presentations on informatics, clinical quality standards, and regulatory compliance. One popular topic at the meeting will be recent legislative and regulatory developments. For example, Susan Dentzer, editor-in chief of Health Affairs, will address the complexities of the new health care reform law. Former CBS News anchor, Connie Chung, will also present a journalist’s perspective on the political forces that shaped health care reform, as part of her keynote speech at the opening general session. Still, the biggest topic of the meeting remains medication safety. A total of nine sessions are directly or indirectly related to safe medication use. One such session, to be moderated by ASHP Research and Education Foundation executive vice president, Stephen J. Allen, RPh, MS, FASHP, will describe the smart-pump IV delivery system developed at Women and Children's Hospital in Buffalo, Ny. Use of the delivery system led to a 50 percent reduction in preventable medication errors at Women and Children's. The initiative won the Foundation's 2009 award for excellence in medication use safety. In addition to the wide variety of sessions offered, the meeting will launch a new mentoring program aimed at developing future pharmacy leaders. The program, said Naomi M. Schultheis, MEd, director of instructional design at ASHP, will “match up experienced mentors with emerging leaders.”

The Feik School of Pharmacy in Texas, which opened in 2006, recently graduated its first class. Amongst the school's inaugural class of 67 graduates are Martha Flores and Marco Vidaurri, both of whom are scheduled to take up jobs as registered pharmacists in local hospitals after completing their board certification exams. While taking classes full time, Flores also worked weekends at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio. She plans to continue working there, only now as a registered pharmacist. Vidaurri also worked as a pharmacy technician before returning to school. “It's definitely been a long road,” says Vidaurri, who takes pride in being a “trailblazer” at Feik School of Pharmacy by being among its first graduates.

Using a bar code on patient wristbands can cut drug errors by more than half, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston report. Their study showed that a bar-code system that matched patients with their medicines reduced the risk of a medication error by 57 percent. The risk of a dose error also fell 42 percent, while the risk of receiving a drug with no physician orders for it fell 61 percent. Under the system, bar codes on patient wristbands and on medication containers allowed nurses to cross-check a patient's identity against the medicine about to be administered. Additionally, such a system reduced the risk that a patient would receive their medication at the wrong time by 27 percent. Transcription errors, which occurred at the rate of 6 percent on medical units that used the older system of dispensing drugs, dropped to zero.

Computer programs used by pharmacists to translate prescription labels for non-English speaking customers can produce potentially harmful errors, new research appearing in the journal Pediatrics indicates. Examples include translating "once a day" into "eleven times a day"; replacing "by mouth" with "by the little"; and translating "two times" into "two kiss." There has been at least one documented case highlighting the potential danger of such errors: a man who was supposed to take his two blood pressure medications once a day took 11 pills of each instead. (The word "once" in English means "eleven" in Spanish.) While nearly all of the pharmacies surveyed in the study said pharmacists checked label printouts for accuracy, most of these pharmacists were not fluent in Spanish. "We're not going to be able to reduce disparities in care if we cannot ensure that patients know how to use their medicines," said Iman Sharif, a study co-author. "Medication errors are a huge problem and this is just one venue where this happens, and I think a really important one."

Research by physician-scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College has determined that the use of an electronic prescription system can reduce the incidence of errors committed by writing prescriptions by hand by sevenfold. Lead author Rainu Kaushal says that nearly 40 percent of handwritten prescriptions in community practices contain mistakes, while senior author Erika Abramson notes that the errors "could result in callbacks from pharmacies and loss of time for doctors, patients and pharmacists." The study authors say that illustrating improvements in safety via e-prescribing is critical to encouraging its employment, particularly among community providers. The providers who took up e-prescribing in the study utilized a commercial, standalone system that supplies dosing recommendations and checks for drug-allergy interactions, drug-drug interactions, and duplicate drugs; all the practices that adopted e-prescribing were provided with technical support. It is the conclusion of the study that, in the absence of extensive technical assistance, it is difficult for physician practices to achieve high rates of e-prescribing usage and subsequent medication safety enhancements.

Most hospitals prepare intravenous drug solutions manually, which is prone to human error, but a new robot that mixes drugs can accomplish the task in a safer, cheaper, and more efficient way. Robotic IV Automation, or RIVA, won the 2009 Computerworld Honors for manufacturing. The biggest challenge to developing the robot, its creators say, was the fact that pharmacists wanted to keep using the lab equipment they have now and not have to switch to proprietary syringes or vials, so RIVA was developed to handle various non-standardized sizes of equipment. The machine is five feet wide, ten feet long, and eight feet tall, and works in a closed environment to protect both staffers and the medicine from contamination. It can prepare up to 60 doses an hour and uses sterile air and high-intensity UV light, cameras, vision systems, and scales, and produces an audit trail. The machine costs $1 million but can produce a return on investment in two years by reducing the amount of medicine that is wasted, its developers say.

Both blind and sighted people with diabetes use insulin pens, although major manufacturers have included disclaimers that the pens should not be used by those who are visually impaired. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and University of Wisconsin, Madison, compared the accuracy of dosing with insulin pens between visually impaired and sighted people. Each study participant received standardized instructions for insulin pen use, either in a recorded or printed format, and they were asked to deliver 10 systematically varied doses into an injection ball. The researchers then weighed the injections on a precision laboratory balance. The results showed no significant association between the accuracy of insulin dosing and variables such as visual status, age, gender, duration of diabetes, or insulin treatment. "This study provided preliminary evidence of the safety of use of insulin pens by visually impaired people and raised questions about the validity of the disclaimer," the researchers concluded, noting that further study on the subject is needed.

Many states eased rules to allow pharmacists to administer seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines. Wolters Kluwer reports a 36 percent jump in seasonal flu shots administered by pharmacists during the current flu season to 7.8 million, or 10 percent of all vaccines given out last year. Pharmacists hope such findings will help their push to permanently ease the rules, eliminate limits on the ages of patients immunized by pharmacists, and allow pharmacists to offer a wider variety of vaccines.

An advisory panel with the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) has recently issued a set of recommendations to make labeling on dispensed prescription packaging more consistent. These recommendations are intended to promote universal standards for prescription medication labels and to address the issue of patient misinterpretation of medication instructions. These recommendations include organizing the prescription label in a patient-centered manner and addressing how patients seek out and understand drug instructions. Language should also be simplified, concise, and standardized, with explicit text that describes the dosage, interval instructions, and purpose for use. The advisory panel also recommended improved readability, providing labeling in the patient's preferred language, the inclusion of supplemental information, and standardized directions to patients.

A recent study indicates that active surveillance can enhance the identification of vancomycin-resistant enterococci colonization. A hospital in Indiana notified the Indiana State Department of Health (IDSH) that three patients with vancomycin-resistant enterococci infection had been identified in the hospital's neonatal ICU from Jan. 28 to Feb. 24, 2009, according to researchers. Matthew D. Ritchey of IDSH and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues defined cases as culture-confirmed vancomycin-resistant enterococci colonization or infection involving a particular pulsed-field gel electrophoresis pattern. The researchers, who presented their findings at the 59th Annual Epidemic Intelligence Service Conference, assessed records and current infection control measures before comparing the performance of active surveillance cultures and incidence of colonization between two intervention periods. Period A took place from Feb. 25 to March 18, 2009, and included weekly active surveillance cultures, improved cleaning procedures, and contact precautions for patients. Period B took place from March 19 to June 9, 2009, and included twice-weekly active surveillance cultures, more rigorous diaper-handling and isolation practices, and cohorting of the staff, researchers said. Active surveillance cultures increased from 22.1 per 100 days during Period A to 27.2 during Period B. Incidence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci colonization decreased from 5.0 to 1.7 cases per 100 patient-days, and no positive cultures were found after May 15. The researchers concluded that improved infection control may have led to a reduction in colonization cases.