FederalDaily - June 14, 2007
VA Opens Updated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on June 11 opened a new building in Dallas that will serve
as the regional home of the VA’s Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy system. The new building
and improved production system will speed medications for those in the VA healthcare system, said VA
Secretary Jim Nicholson. The seven existing mail-out pharmacies, with an annual budget of $3 billion,
dispense 75 percent of all VA prescriptions. The VA expects the mail-out pharmacies will dispense nearly
100 million prescriptions this year, four times as many prescriptions that were filled a decade ago,
Nicholson said. VA’s seven consolidated mail-out pharmacies are in Boston; Charleston, S.C.;
Chicago; Dallas; Leavenworth, Kan.; Nashville, Tenn. and Tucson, Ariz. “VA’s mail-out
pharmacies provide convenient, world-class service to veterans through state-of-the-art processing
of prescriptions for our patients,” said Nicholson. To see more, go to: http://www1.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1344
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Group Says Federal Scientists Need More Protections
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) urged Congress to enact tighter restrictions on the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) that will protect FDA scientists from their own agency’s management.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee is considering legislation to help
ensure the public is protected from unsafe drugs, but the proposal needs to go further, UCS said on
June 11. UCS has called for provisions guaranteeing an open drug-approval process that is accessible
to the public—and that includes FDA scientists’ dissenting views. FDA scientists must have
the freedom to publish their research and to express dissenting views within the agency, said Dr. Francesca
Grifo, director of UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program. As examples, the group cited the cases
of two drugs—the popular diabetes drug Avandia and the antibiotic Ketek—in which each won
initial FDA approval, but later exhibited serious negative side effects. Grifo said that in each instance,
FDA failed to heed the warnings of its own scientists. “FDA scientists, charged with evaluating
drugs, are often ignored and their work suppressed,” Grifo said. To see more, go to: www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/house-subcommittee-to-0038.html
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NTEU Supports Expanded Telework Program
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) suggested that the federal government’s telework
effort could be easily expanded if agency managers sit down with union representatives and work out
their differences. NTEU President Colleen Kelley testified June 12 on telework issues at a hearing
of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight. Kelley pointed
to the successful program within the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)—where 54 percent of the
trademark examining corps telework. At the same time, she noted that management resistance continues
to be the main barrier to increased telework opportunities. The subcommittee is considering NTEU-supported
bipartisan legislation, S. 1000, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2007, introduced by Sens. Ted Stevens,
R-Alaska, and Mary Landrieu, D-La.. The bill would require executive branch agencies to establish a
policy under which their employees would be eligible to participate in a telework program. The legislation
also would create a system for evaluating agency telework efforts. To see more, go to: www.nteu.org
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