Drug maker Purdue Pharma and the National Community Pharmacists Association have introduced the latest version of a video designed to educate pharmacists and other pharmacy staff about pharmacy crime.

CVS Caremark reported strong numbers on both the retail and PBM sides of its business — but the real bombshell for analysts on the call was the news that the company has raised its estimate on the number of Express Script patients that CVS feels it can keep from going back to Walgreens.

That's a big boast. But Rite Aid, too, likes its shot to keep the ESI customers who at one time frequented Walgreens' pharmacies to fill their prescriptions. And Walgreens, for its part, reminds analysts that there was a reason those ESI patients were filling their prescriptions in the first place. So the Chicago retailer is confident that they'll be able to entice many of their former patients to return to the pharmacy fold. But in the end, who's really going to capture that coveted ESI patient? Will they stay, or will they go?

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett last week signed into law S.B. 201, a bill that takes critical steps toward leveling the playing field between large pharmacy benefit managers and the mail-order pharmacies they own and local, independent community pharmacies.

Industry leaders at an annual retail pharmacy conference in Canada got a look at a kiosk that allows patients to order prescription drugs through an Internet connection.

Pharmacy automation manufacturer Kirby Lester has launched a version of one of its tablet counters with streamlined verification software.

Given the extent of the meningitis outbreak linked to a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts, new regulations for such pharmacies might be a good idea, but how to implement them remains uncertain.

(THE NEWS: Meningitis outbreak linked to compounding pharmacy spawns new proposed legislation. Click here to read the story.)

Watson Pharmaceuticals on Wednesday announced the sale of its Rugby over-the-counter business to the Harvard Drug Group — a distributor and provider of private-label OTCs and generic prescription products under the Major Pharmaceuticals brand — for approximately $117 million.

Rite Aid is stocking extra emergency supplies and keeping its pharmacies open as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast, the retail pharmacy chain said.

AccentHealth collected data through an online survey conducted from Sept. 18 to Sept. 30, 2012. There were a total of 940 people who responded via AccentHealth's national, online panel of network viewers ages 18 years and up who opt-in to participate in reasearch with AccentHealth.

Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy has launched a mobile app for patients to manage their prescriptions, the retail pharmacy chain said Tuesday.

WellTransitions could be couched as another way in which Walgreens is striving to create solutions that lower the cost of overall health care outside of the physical retail pharmacy space, because it is. WellTransitions also could be characterized as a program that will routinely chip away at the $25 billion associated with hospital re-admissions by having more prescriptions filled at the pharmacy counter, because it does. But the real impact of this news? The real clincher? Hospitals need retail pharmacy if they're going to focus on reducing re-admissions, eliminating unnecessary healthcare costs and avoiding those penalties.

And that's the direction Walgreens is headed. Most recently, the company added managed care vet Brad Fluegel as chief strategy officer, adding another talented expert to Walgreens chief Greg Wasson’s dream team, which he has described as the “perfect blend of internal, long-term talent” and “external expertise and talents” that is helping to accelerate a massive transformation in its business. (For exclusive coverage of all Walgreens' efforts, click here for the Sept. 24 DSN special report.)