Influenza killed almost 80,000 people in the US last year, more than opioid overdoses, more than breast cancer, more than car accidents. The flu vaccine works and is benign. Get your flu shot with us before Thanksgiving!
Shingrix is highly effective against shingles infections, but has meaningful side effects in terms of sore arms and also fever and systemic symptoms that may result in missed work for 2 days or so. In addition, supply is problematic and back ordered. We are now unsure when to expect we will have adequate supply, possibly not till New Year’s.
Generic drugs are equally effective and safe as brand name pharmaceuticals. Prior authorization for expensive brand names is difficult to obtain and hard to justify. If a brand name is desired, the member will be asked to help provide the rationale for the approval process.
Influenza vaccine is now available in our office. We want to get everyone immunized before Thanksgiving.
Hearing aids are essential devices for many older people, but often are not obtained because of the persistently high expense. I recently explored Costco as a source of high-technology major-brand hearing aids at dramatically lower prices.
Contaminated valsartan antihypertensive medication was discovered and is being recalled. No one is likely to have been injured by the NDMA contamination, but we intend to switch everyone to irbesartan, a comparable medication in the same ARB class that has not shown any contamination issues.
Opioid drugs, also called narcotics, are critical medications for relieving acute pain but more problematic when occasionally used for chronic pain. We describe new state regulations concerning opioid prescriptions and monitoring and how it affects you and our practice.
In the midst of the marches against gun violence, the Boston Globe special section pointed out the 78% of Americans don’t own guns, but 3% of Americans own over half of all guns. We do some arithmetic with those numbers.
Modest use of marijuana or alcohol is unlikely to be physically harmful, unlike heavy use. Teenagers should not use either. The recreational marijuana statute heightens the concern about how to protect teenagers from marijuana.
So-called “almondmilk” is not milk but an emulsion of a few almonds in water combined with chalk and vitamins. Let’s look through the marketing haze to find the facts.