by PGx Medical | Jan 23, 2017 | Uncategorized
As a healthcare professional In a long-term care community, caring for your residents is what you do. Educating you on tools and resources available to make your job easier and help your residents live a better quality of life…that’s what we do.
Pharmacogenetics is a patient-centered program to help improve the quality of life in seniors across the country
PGx Medical is committed to partnering with communities and physicians in the care of their residents. Through our education program, we work one on one with you and your team to help incorporate pharmacogenetics into your community.
Medicine is changing and the work you do as a healthcare professional has never been so important. With an aging population and staggering healthcare costs, how are we going to be able to afford in dollars and workforce to provide care? It’s never been so important to help move healthcare forward.
Rethink the delivery of medicine.
By implementing programs like pharmacogenetics, your healthcare team will have evidence-based results on each individual patient to help guide you in proper prescribing, eliminating “trial and error” prescribing. Pharmacogenetics impacts quality by addressing key clinical concerns such as falls, dementia, sleep, pain, med management and overall staff efficiencies.
Simple Three-Step Program:
The program is a simple three-step process that will partner providers and communities together to educate, deliver and implement documentable results that will address new regulations.
Benefits of Pharmacogenetic Testing:
- Reduction of medications
- Reduced trial and error
- Less med pass time for nurse
- Overall medication cost reduction
Our program also helps you meet the new 2017 CMS requirements in regards to comprehensive care planning and drug regimen review, including psychotropic and pain management assessments.
To learn more about pharmacogenetic testing or to schedule an educational webinar or a PGx Medical team member to speak to your group or organization, contact us at: info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
by PGx Medical | Jan 20, 2017 | Uncategorized
Welcome to our Friday FOCUS on Pharmacogenetics
Each Friday we will post new and relevant information regarding Pharmacogenetics. We hope you will find this useful and pass along to colleagues. If you should have any questions regarding pharmacogenetics, please feel free to reach out to us at PGx Medical, info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
One question we get asked a lot when we travel around the country educating healthcare professionals on pharmacogenetics is…
Who should be tested?
Even though our pharmacogenetic program is a once in a lifetime test and reimbursed by medicare and in some states medicaid…it isn’t for everyone.
If you have a resident at your LTC facility who isn’t taking any medications, there is no need to test that resident. The following are a few reasons why I resident would benefit from pharmacogenetic testing.
- Taking multiple medications. You are having problems that you write-off as side effects from your medication. It may be that your drugs are interacting. How would you know without a pharmacogenetic test? Drug interactions may make your drug less effective, cause unexpected side effects, or increase the action of a particular drug. Some drug interactions can even be harmful to you. The PGx Medical test result highlights potential drug-on-drug reactions so healthcare professionals can dose accordingly.
- You’ve been taking your medication but your condition is not improving. Have you ever heard the phrase, “let’s try it for a few weeks and see if you improve.” That is called trial and error and honestly, how physicians prescribed medicine because they didn’t know the genetic make-up of each patient. Now, pharmacogenetic testing can help guide healthcare professionals in proper prescribing by aligning medications with each person’s unique genetic profile. And the test report will show them more effective options.
- Your physician has prescribed an anticoagulant. The FDA recommends individuals be aware of pharmacogenetics prior to starting certain anticoagulants such as Plavix and Warfarin. Patients who are poor metabolizers of these medications may be at risk – or may not be receiving the full benefit of these drugs.
Pharmacogenetics can help identify genetic markers and can assist in individualization of treatment.
PGx Medical is the trusted and experienced resource for the implementation of pharmacogenetics in the field of aging services. Contact us for more information, or let us know if you would like to be part of a Patient-Centered Care Pharmacogenetic Pilot Program. In conjunction with Dr. Linda Shell, PGx Medical is presently enrolling provider organizations and communities. To see if you qualify, go to: www.pgxmed.com/pilotprogram.
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
by PGx Medical | Jan 17, 2017 | News
Doctors look for clues when trying to determine if a patient might become addicted to opioid painkillers. Clinical risk factors such as medical history, family history, and other environmental or social clues can help.
Addiction is estimated to be about 40% to 60% heritable, meaning genetics likely account for about half of a person’s risk.
Overdose deaths continue to climb with 19,000 deaths related to prescription opioid painkillers
While pharmacogenetics is not the end all be all, it is a tool used by many healthcare professionals across the country to help guide them in proper prescribing. It can help physicians and pharmacist determine if a patient has the ability to metabolize a pain medication, therefore alerting them if a patient says they are not receiving therapy and need more.
“There might actually be something to that,” said Clay Bullard, president of PGx Medical. “We’ve had physicians tell us they had patients who would complain their pain medication wasn’t working and they needed more. After performing a pharmacogenetic test, they realized the patient wasn’t able to metabolize the medication – or they were a ultra-rapid metabolizer of their pain medication so they needed to adjust their dosage accordingly. On the other hand, we’ve had physicians tell us their concern was validated after performing a pharmacogenetic test. The patient did have the ability to metabolize the medication.” Bullard went on to say with opioids, one concern is with a poor metabolizer. The body doesn’t metabolize the medication the way the manufacturer intended so the drug sits in their body and can build up toxins which can be deadly.
Cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is a gene product responsible for the metabolism of many major drug groups, including opioids. “A pharmacogenetic (PGx) test, approved by the FDA, is available, which looks for specific changes in the gene and interprets whether you have a ‘good copy’ or a ‘bad copy. A good copy would be a functional allele, while a bad copy is a non-functional allele. These changes and their combinations help predict how well a person will metabolize a drug.
An individual’s genotype can help predict the CYP450 activity, which classifies them into one of the four metabolizer types. The incidence of poor and ultrarapid metabolizers varies greatly among various populations. For example, approximately 10% of Caucasians are PMs for CYP2D6.
The CYP450 testing is a once-in-a-lifetime test. The result will be part of your medical record and denotes your genetic capability of handling these drugs. This not only applies to pain medications but also to other medications such as anti-convulsive medications, cardiac medications and psychotropic drugs that are used for depression and anxiety control.
Hydrocodone, the most frequently prescribed drug in the U.S., is metabolized differently depending on an individual’s phenotype. An ultra-rapid metabolizer may get some pain control, but their hydromorphone levels are going to increase and they may complain of side effects. Physicians have to be aware of that and they may need to make dosing adjustments accordingly. Poor metabolizers may not get sufficient pain control. If a patient is complaining about a drug not being effective, or about side effects, and the physician is considering a dosing adjustment, genetic testing can guide them.
The potential risks relating to how pain medications are metabolized are exacerbated by drug diversion. Drugs are now one of the leading causes of death in this country. It’s important for physicians to be aware of the impact of genetic variation on metabolizing drugs and try to identify those patients who may be at risk. If someone says they always take a half dose of a drug because of its effect or somebody else says the drug doesn’t really work for them, it’s a warning sign.
Getting the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic under control is a top priority for U.S. public health officials as overdose deaths continue to climb — with nearly 19,000 deaths related to prescription opioid painkillers.
PGx Medical is the trusted and experience resource for the education and implementation of pharmacogenetics.
For more information on pharmacogenetic testing contact:
PGx Medical
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112.
source: medpagetoday.com, Dr Leland McClure
by PGx Medical | Jan 16, 2017 | Pilot Program
Aligning Rx with DNA
The Pharmacogenetics Program is specifically designed for providers serving older adults in any setting. The program is a simple three-step process that facilitates DNA testing and aligns medications with the resident’s personal DNA. Polypharmacy is an ever-increasing problem in long term care and pharmacogenetics testing is a tool that can be utilized as part of a quality assurance and process improvement (QAPI) program. Additional benefits of pharmacogenetic testing are reduction of medications, reduced trial and error, less med pass time for nurse, and overall medication cost reduction.
by PGx Medical | Jan 13, 2017 | Uncategorized
Welcome to our Friday FOCUS on Pharmacogenetics
Each Friday we will post new and relevant information regarding Pharmacogenetics. We hope you will find this useful and pass along to colleagues. If you should have any questions regarding pharmacogenetics, please feel free to reach out to us at PGx Medical, info@pgxmed.com or 405-509-5112.
Cardiovascular Disease and Pharmacogenetics
Elevated blood pressure is on the rise around the world, with an increasing impact on mortality, according to a large international study.
Pharmacogenetics can help identify genetic markers of antihypertensive drug responses and can assist in individualization of hypertension treatment.
In October 2016 the American Heart Association released a Scientific Statement on
Enhancing Literacy in Cardiovascular Genetics
Advances in genomics are enhancing our understanding of the genetic basis of cardiovascular diseases, both congenital and acquired, and stroke. These advances include finding genes that cause or increase the risk for childhood and adult-onset diseases, finding genes that influence how patients respond to medications, and the development of genetics-guided therapies for diseases. However, the ability of cardiovascular and stroke clinicians to fully understand and apply this knowledge to the care of their patients has lagged. This statement addresses what the specialist caring for patients with cardiovascular diseases and stroke should know about genetics; how they can gain this knowledge; how they can keep up-to-date with advances in genetics, genomics, and pharmacogenetics; and how they can apply this knowledge to improve the care of patients and families with cardiovascular diseases and stroke.
This is an exciting time in the field of medicine, when the application of genetics and genomics-driven diagnostics, prognostics, and therapeutics is seeing a rapid growth. The federal investment in the Precision Medicine Initiative has energized the field of genomic applications in health care. The applications to cardiovascular diseases and stroke are expected to see similar growth, and the cardiovascular clinician needs to be well informed about this burgeoning field and how to effectively apply it to the care of their patients. This statement provides the current and future state of knowledge in which the clinician needs to be proficient, the public resources available to the clinician to stay abreast of this knowledge, recommendations for increasing genetic awareness and edu- cation among practicing clinicians, and the importance of close collaboration with genetics specialists. Societies such as the American Heart Association should invest in educational tools and resources to increase genetics awareness and knowledge through continuing medical education.
The eventual goal is to empower and enable the cardiovascular clinician to understand, interpret, and apply genetic information to patient care in an effective, responsible, and cost-efficient manner. ~Read entire article at: American Heart Association
Pharmacogenetics can help identify genetic markers of antihypertensive drug responses and can assist in individualization of hypertension treatment. PGx Medical is the trusted and experienced resource for the implementation of pharmacogenetics in the field of aging services.
PGx Medical
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
Source: Mital S, Musunuru K, Garg V, Russell MW, Lanfear DE, Gupta RM; on behalf of the American Heart Association Council on Functional Genomics and Translational Biology; Council on Cardiovascular Disease in the Young; Council on Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing; Stroke Council; Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health; and Council on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research. Enhancing literacy in cardiovascular genetics: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association [published online ahead of print September 26, 2016]. Circ Cardiovasc Genet. doi: 10.1161/HCG.0000000000000031.
