Showing posts with label Gigi S. Davidson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gigi S. Davidson. Show all posts

Sunday, January 19, 2014

High cost of valley fever: Price of drug skyrockets-fluconazole--pet owners price shopping--Gigi Davidson, a compounding expert in veterinary medicine at North Carolina State University, recommends that pet owners start with an FDA-approved version of fluconazole before switching to a compounded drug. After such a switch, it’s important for a veterinarian and pet owner to closely monitor the animal to verify that the compounded version is working.

The Republic | azcentral.comSat Nov 16, 2013 10:53 PM
People with valley fever may have something else to cough, ache and sweat about: the spiraling cost of the most commonly prescribed drug to treat the airborne fungal disease.
The price of the generic drug, fluconazole, has surged to as much as 15 times what it cost in early summer, according to a sampling of prices across metro Phoenix obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The sudden price hike has doctors worried that uninsured patients will have trouble paying for the drug, which some people must take for months to cure the disease. Another big concern is for dogs and other animals that are much more susceptible than people, say veterinarians and animal-rescue groups.
A one-month supply of 100-milligram tablets of fluconazole rose from $5.50 in June to $52 in mid-July when a manufacturer raised its price, according to one pharmacy.
That sent pet owners scouring local pharmacies and online pet- medication sites to find less expensive options. Some have given their dogs to animal-rescue groups because they couldn’t afford the treatment.
Dee Alschuler, who runs Lucky Dog Rescue in Phoenix, has noticed a trend in recent weeks. She estimates that more than half of the new dogs she gets have valley fever, and many of the owners cite the cost of fluconazole for surrendering the pets.
“If it’s a bigger dog like a Great Dane, your costs can easily be $500 to $600 each month,” said Alschuler, whose organization is caring for 18 dogs with valley fever. “A lot of people don’t have the means to spend that much. That’s a car payment.”

continue to read here

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Compounding for Animal Patients: Background and USP’s Role Gigi Davidson


Compounding for Animal Patients: Background and USP’s Role
Gigi Davidson, BSPh, DIVCP
Director of Clinical Pharmacy Services NC State College of Veterinary Medicine
Chair, USP Compounding Expert Committee 2010-2015, BSPh, DIVCP
Director of Clinical Pharmacy Services NC State College of Veterinary Medicine
Chair, USP Compounding Expert Committee 2010-2015

Powerpoint-2012 Stakeholder Meeting

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Repost: Use Caution When Buying Pet Medications Online

Gigi Davidson, Director of Clinical Pharmacy Services with North Carolina State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, has warned owners about buying pet medications online. She was previously interviewed as part of an extensive report by WBTV in Charlotte, NC. To view the report, click here.  For more information click here.


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Use Caution When Buying Pet Medications Online


Gigi Davidson, Director of Clinical Pharmacy Services with North Carolina State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, has warned owners about buying pet medications online. She was previously interviewed as part of an extensive report by WBTV in Charlotte, NC. To view the report, click here.  For more information click here.




Friday, August 31, 2012

More Great Training on Compounding for Veterinarians

Gigi Davidson will be presenting Compounding:  Pearls and Perils: 2012 Update, What Your Pharmacist Doesn't Know About Filling Prescriptions for Animals, and Right Bug, Right Drug: Maximizing Safety and Efficacy of Antibiotic Administration at the 2012 17th Annual North Carolina Veterinary Conference November 2-4, 2012.

For more information on this conference click here.

Upcoming CE Regarding best Practices for Prescribing and Obtaining Compounds

Upcoming CE at KIAWAH ISLAND RESORT in SC on September 7-9,2012.  Part of the CE includes Gigi Davidson, RPH, DIVCP presenting topics on Compounding:


New Drugs and New Ideas for Old or Unavailable Drugs: Finding Alternatives During Drug Shortages, New Uses for Old Drugs, New FDA Approvals
Best Practices for Prescribing and Obtaining Compounds: Protect Yourself and Your Patients-Checklist for Vetting Compounding Pharmacies, Compound Marketplace--What's Legal and What's Not, Simple Tools for Assessing the Quality of Compounds
Drug Interactions: Which Ones Really Matter? Basic Primer on Drug Interactions in Animals vs. Humans, Significant Drug Interactions for Top 50 Veterinary Drugs, Recognizing the "Rare" Drug Interaction When it Happens in Your Patient
 
For more information click here.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Monday, June 18, 2012

Do Pharmacists Need Specific Training in Veterinary Medicine?


The following article points out the special knowledge required of a pharmacist when filling a prescription written for an animal.  If a pharmacist is not knowledgeable in this specialized area, an animal can be seriously injured or death can result.  Do colleges need to offer a veterinary pharmacy degree?  If so, should pharmacist with this speciality degree be the only pharmacists who can fill these types of prescriptions? Do state boards of pharmacy need to do a better job of regulating pharmacies that fill prescriptions written for animals?  Should the state boards mandate that a pharmacist have a certain number of credit hours or training in veterinary pharmacology?

Veterinarians say pharmacists change prescriptions without asking

June 18, 2012
By: Edie Lau
For The VIN News Service 

Veterinarians in Oregon have reported to state pharmacy regulators concerns that retail pharmacists are making unauthorized changes to prescriptions written for animal patients, apparently out of ignorance of veterinary pharmacology.

The changes they report involve altering prescribed dosages or switching the medication itself — for example, by substituting one type of insulin for another.

Gary Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon Board of Pharmacy, said for a pharmacist to make such changes without permission from the prescribing doctor is unequivocally wrong.

“It’s a direct violation of the pharmacy practice (act) and pharmacy rules,” he said. “That would be a violation in every state. The pharmacist is supposed to prescribe the drug in conjunction with the prescriber’s instruction. Period.”

Schnabel could not confirm that violations actually are occurring, however; he said he is unaware of a formal complaint being filed in his 18 years with the pharmacy board.

“We have not seen an actual event that we can investigate,” Schabel said. “... We can’t say that this is happening or we know it’s happening. All we can say is that we’re hearing about it from veterinarians. ... I don’t say I don’t believe them,” he added. “I just don’t have it documented.”

Two veterinarians from the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association (OVMA), along with OVMA Executive Director Glenn Kolb, met in May with Schnabel and the pharmacy board’s director of compliance, to discuss the problem. The group agreed to collaborate on educating and raising awareness among pharmacists, and Schnabel underscored the need of veterinarians to formally report suspected violations.


Although fielding questions from pharmacists unaccustomed to dispensing drugs to pets isn’t new for veterinarians, the frequency with which veterinary prescriptions are misunderstood appears to be rising as pet owners shift to retail pharmacies for their pets’ medications, practitioners say. Traditionally, pet owners obtained medications directly from veterinarians.

The issue of misunderstood animal prescriptions is not particular to Oregon. Veterinarians from across the United States — and occasionally from Canada and the United Kingdom — have posted about the subject on message boards of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN), an online community for the profession.

Dr. Sheri Morris, president of the OVMA and owner of Willamette Valley Animal Hospital near Salem, Ore., said the problem is driven by broad market trends.  

“I think it’s because of the aggressiveness of human pharmacies to go after veterinary business, that’s what’s brought it to a head,” Morris said. “It used to be that it happened so infrequently that no one did much about it.”  

In Morris’s hospital earlier this year, one doctor had an experience in which a pharmacist changed the type of insulin prescribed for a diabetic cat. The veterinarian prescribed glargine; the pharmacy provided NPH. The pharmacist “convinced (the cat’s owner) to buy it because it was less expensive,” Morris said.  

“But they are completely not interchangeable, so we sent her back to the pharmacy, telling her, ‘No, you need to get what’s in the prescription,’ ” Morris recounted.  



To read the remainder of this article, click here.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Compounding Concerns for Animals Near and Dear

A article by Alice Villalobos, DVM that appears in the Veterinary Practice News, which can read here, makes some very good points about compounding for animals.

First, Villalobos asks:

Competitive pricing, counterfeit drugs, unreliable sources for drugs and the honesty that our profession must maintain present an everyday dilemma. How can veterinarians avoid being tarnished by scandals of adulterated and contaminated food and drugs and still maintain the public’s trust?

Next, Villalobos points out a number of the current issues regarding compounding for animals:

The hundreds of compounding pharmacies nationwide do not use standardized methods or bases for their compounded products. Only a few pharmacies run tests on the stability of their purchased and outsourced compounds.
Some are illegally manufacturing medications under the guise of pharmacy compounding. The field has sprawled into a confusing crossover situation for veterinarians. We have human pharmacists preparing products for animals. If they do not respect and understand the human-animal bond, they might purchase “bargain” bulk or raw chemical preparations made in China and other unreliable sources to save money. Without testing these bargain agents for reliability, stability and contaminants, our patients are at risk.
For instance, potassium bromide, cisapride and diethylstilbestrol and other discontinued or no-longer-approved human drugs can be prepared only from bulk chemicals for veterinary medicine, and they are loosely supervised. We need to protect our veterinary patients from being victimized by this potential hazard. 

Proper Handling
For example, Pergolide for horses is available only through compounding pharmacies. Compounded Pergolide is stable for 30 days and must be kept in a temperature-sensitive environment. Many pharmacies sell Pergolide with a six-month dating, and the product is not stored adequately to ensure its stability.
Finally, Villalobos makes an excellent point, with quotes from Gigi Davidson, RPh, Dipl. ICVP, director of clinical pharmacy services at North Carolina State University, about the Veterinarian ultimately being responsible:
 “Ultimately, the veterinarian is accountable for what happens to the patient.""Veterinarians must realize that even if evidence abounds regarding the safety and efficacy of a compound, they are responsible for determining whether the compound is achieving the desired therapeutic effect,” Dr. Davidson wrote in a recent article for AAHA News.


Veterinarians should keep track of the results for their patients who have been prescribed compounds and make sure they know what exactly is going into each prescription.” 
Davidson cited the case of a canine patient treated with pyridostigmine (Mestinon) solution for myasthenia gravis at the N.C. State College of Veterinary Medicine's teaching hospital. The dog was doing well on the treatment but returned several months later weak and unable to stand.
"Apparently the owner had taken her prescription for pyridostigmine solution to a compounding pharmacy and the well-intentioned pharmacist had offered to compound a more dog-friendly flavor of the pyridostigmine," Davidson said. "Unfortunately, the pharmacist included methylcellulose in the vehicle which completely bound the pyridostigmine, making it unavailable for absorption. Luckily, we realized the mistake before the dog was euthanized."






Monday, April 23, 2012

India No Longer Making Cisapride

Cisapride, while banned for use in humans, is a commonly used and valuable drug used for animals.  The country of India previously made Cisapride; however, their government has shut down production for human safety reasons.  Several organizations have petitioned the Indian government to reconsider.  Here is the letter that the Society of Veterinary Hospital Pharmacists wrote to the Indian government petitioning them to reconsider.  Click here.


Special thanks to Gigi S. Davidson for bringing this issue to the author's attention. 

Monday, April 16, 2012

Declarations Filed in Franck's district court proceeding

In the appeal to the 11th Circuit in the Franck's case, the court, pursuant to the federal appellate rules, is normally only allowed to consider what was part of the record in the district court. In other words, the appellate court cannot consider evidence or information that was not presented in the district court.  In the district court, the parties filed a number of declarations or sworn statements by various individuals, including the following:

Declaration of Loyd V. Allen, Jr.