Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Insurance company Manulife has announced big changes in how it covers certain prescription drugs, with roughly 260 medications now only available for coverage if dispensed at a Loblaw-owned pharmacy.
The new arrangement is known as a preferred pharmacy network arrangement: insurers get a better price on medication in exchange for giving pharmacies exclusive rights to dispense it. This agreement includes medication used to treat complex, chronic or life-threatening conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's, multiple sclerosis, hypertension, cancer and hepatitis C.
For independent pharmacists like Mohammad Masood, it signals another shift away from personalized patient care
"For every medication, they can come here," he said. “But for their oncology or arthritis medication, they have to go to a completely different pharmacy and pharmacist. They may be well trained, but they don't have the holistic picture that we have.”
Masood says many of the 260 medication included in this agreement were already restricted in terms of where they could be filled under coverage, but he says independent pharmacies should have been brought into this process.
"If they wanted to improve competition and come down on price they could have come to independent pharmacists and said this is the price we are willing to pay for a drug. 'If you want to dispense it, dispense it,'" he suggests. "'If you want to leave it. Leave it.'"
Manulife says the deal will provide "more options" for patients with prescriptions available for pick up in store or by delivery
"At this time, to evolve our program, it's appropriate to select a single service provider to move the program forward for the benefit of our customers and their employees," said Doug Bryce, Manulife vice-president of product and platforms.
Loblaw, which owns Shoppers Drug Mart, insists the patient experience "will remain unchanged, if not better."
"They can pick up their prescriptions from one of more than 1,800 pharmacies across our network, or have them shipped directly to their home," said spokeswoman Catherine Thomas.
But others, aren’t as sure.
"The consolidation of the pharmacy business is less choice for Canadians," says Stephen Morgan, a professor of health policy at the University of British Columbia. "It will start looking a lot like our telecom industry where we have less choice and pay high prices. You don't want to see that in your pharmaceutical sector."
In Quebec, rules prevent preferred pharmacy networks so coverage in that province will remain unchanged. But for those in small and rural communities in other parts of the country, it might mean driving longer distances to a Loblaw-owned pharmacy.
"It's not ideal from a patient care perspective," said Justin Bates, CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists Association. "It introduces an uneven playing field because largely independent pharmacies aren’t able to participate."
At Mohammad Masood’s Scarborough, Ont. pharmacy most patients are long time customers. Masood says he knows their history and understands their medical needs. He thinks deals like the partnership between Manulife and Loblaw doesn’t take that into account.
"There is a discontinuity," he says. "We have a circle of care here in which the patient is taken care of."
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.