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Adobe For all the explosive controversy over the approval of the first treatment for Alzheimer’s disease in nearly 20 years, hardly any patients have actually gotten it yet. The drug’s eye-popping, $56,000 annual price and questionable benefit to patients have been a shock to the bureaucracy that makes the health care system run and that’s having a clear effect on uptake. Some analysts estimated last month that fewer than 100 patients were dosed in the first weeks after the therapy was approved, though availability will likely ramp up over the coming months. Though the Food and Drug Administration said in approving the therapy, Aduhelm, that the data indicate a likely benefit, hospital and insurer committees are conducting their own analyses, acting as another set of gatekeepers. They regularly review new treatments, but the lingering questions about the drug’s efficacy, as well as the logistical challenges of delivering an infused drug, are complicating and ....
Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images When pharmacist Erin McCreary moved to Pennsylvania in 2018, she didn’t anticipate ever having to administer vaccines. She’d taken a vaccination certification course back in pharmacy school six years earlier, but it wasn’t part of her job description as an infectious diseases pharmacist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. That’s why she wasn’t concerned about the state pharmacy board rule that pharmacists had to file their certificate within two years of receiving it or they’d have to take the course again. “Well, now, of course, COVID-19 happened,” McCreary told ....