Virtual cross-border medical tourism allows many residents in the United States to purchase brand name medicines from companies in Mexico without travelling there. Monthly economic reports indicate that the online brand name pharmaceutical product prices in Mexico are noticeably lower than the...

The aim of the work is to develop scientific and methodological approaches to modelling the optimal strategy to increase the competitiveness of pharmacy chains (PC), which belong to different clusters.Materials and methods. The algorithm for determining the optimal strategy for increasing the...

Aim: to develop a set of organizational and economic approaches to analyzing the effectiveness of pharmacy institutions as important subjects of insurance relations in national health care.Materials and methods. The study used data from the regulatory framework governing the accounting and...

Background: There is a growing need to understand the determinants of service quality in community pharmacy from the viewpoint of customers. Objectives: The study explored customer perspectives of pharmacy services using quality indicators and proposed a path for quality improvement. Methods: A...

We partnered with Walmart to test 22 nudges designed to boost vaccination rates in their pharmacies. Nudges were delivered via text message to over 650,000 Walmart pharmacy patients in the fall of 2020 and encouraged patients to visit Walmart for a flu vaccine. We demonstrate that behaviorally...

COVID-19 created destination lockdown globally with dire consequences across the tourism industry. Despite previous epidemics, there was limited pandemic vigilance and situational awareness (SA) by the tourism industry. A higher SA level, capacity building, alertness, and responsiveness are...

This study investigates the role of retail pharmacy ownership in the opioid epidemic in the United States by comparing independently owned pharmacies' and chain pharmacies' prescription opioid dispensing practices. Using data of prescription opioid orders at the pharmacy level between 2006 and...

In a pervasive but controversial practice, drug firms frequently make monetary or in-kind payments to physicians in the course of promoting prescription drugs. We use a federal database on the universe of such interactions between 2013 and 2015 linked to prescribing behavior in Medicare Part D....

Selective contracting is an increasingly popular tool for reducing healthcare costs, but any savings must be weighed against consumer surplus losses from restricted access. Recently, many prescription drug plans utilize preferred pharmacy networks to reduce drug prices. Our results suggest that...

In a pervasive but controversial practice, drug firms frequently make monetary or in-kind payments to physicians in the course of promoting prescription drugs. We use a federal database on the universe of such interactions between 2013 and 2015 linked to prescribing behavior in Medicare Part D....

Exploring the History and Literature of Telehealth -- Establishing the Definitions for Telehealth -- Integration of Telehealth into Contemporary Pharmacy Practice -- Foundational Steps for Designing Telehealth Care Models -- Description of Operational Telehealth Pharmacy Practice Workflow in...

The mentor and the protégé -- The big bet -- The playbook -- The rookies -- The ecosystem -- The salesman -- The program -- The stand-off -- The performer -- The spiel -- The whistleblower -- The whales -- An interloper -- 'Let's get a few more' -- Fall guy -- 'It's going down' -- The pyramid...

Despite their importance to the supply of prescription drugs, there has been limited research on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and their vertical relationships to insurers and drug manufacturers. This paper provides an overview of the current state of research on this topic, motivates why...

In theory, equilibrium profits for drug patent holders would not involve significant restraints on production and patient utilization if the market had a mechanism for two-part pricing (Oi 1971) or quantity commitments (Murphy, Snyder, and Topel 2014). In fact, patent expiration has little...

We study the effects of competition by state-owned firms, leveraging the decentralized entry of public pharmacies to local markets in Chile. Public pharmacies sell the same drugs at a third of private pharmacy prices, because of stronger upstream bargaining and market power in the private...

Background: Concerns about financial sustainability of health systems have promoted the adoption of risk-sharing agreements. Nevertheless, few insights have been derived, due to their confidentiality. The purpose of this study is to analyze to what extent these agreements have been implemented...

I evaluate how the probability of substitution of a prescribed drug in a pharmacy depends on the pharmacists' profits and patients' out of pocket costs. I use Finnish population-wide data covering all prescriptions of three popular antidepressants. I find that one euro increase in the total...

Home-delivered prescriptions have no delivery charge and lower copayments than prescriptions picked up at a pharmacy. Nevertheless, when home delivery is offered on an opt-in basis, the take-up rate is only 6%. We study a program that makes active choice of either home delivery or pharmacy...

Policymakers have sought to reduce high prices and price variations by increasing price transparency. We sought to measure retail drug price variations and their relation to transparency. Our survey of six national pharmacies reveals large price variations both among and within pharmacies for...

Home-delivered prescriptions have no delivery charge and lower copayments than prescriptions picked up at a pharmacy. Nevertheless, when home delivery is offered on an opt-in basis, the take-up rate is only 6%. We study a program that makes active choice of either home delivery or pharmacy...

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) manage the drug benefits for over 95 percent of Americans with prescription drug coverage. However, conflicts of interest inherent in the PBM business model create perverse incentives for drug price increases. The most significant conflict of interest arises from...