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MSNBCAmid growing reports of price-gouging for life-saving drugs, half of hospital officials said they’ve bought medications from back-door suppliers during recent drug shortages, a new survey shows.
Fifty-two percent of hospital purchasing agents and pharmacists reported they’d bought drugs from so-called “gray market” vendors during the previous two years, according to a just-released survey of 549 hospitals by the Institute for Safe Medication practices, an advocacy group.
Gray-market suppliers are those that operate outside official channels, often buying drugs from uncertain sources and reselling them at a steep profit. A report issued last week by a one hospital association found their average mark-up was 650 percent.
Pressures from demanding doctors and desperate patients helped fuel the transactions, making hospital staffers feel like they had no choice but to buy drugs in short supply at steep prices.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44280296/ns/health-health_care/
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More than half the recent shortages have resulted because government or company inspectors found problems like microbial contamination that can be lethal on injection. Others have occurred because of capacity problems at drug plants or lack of interest because of low profits, according to the F.D.A.
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Heather Bresch, president of the generic drug giant Mylan, says the shortages grow out of a sweeping consolidation of the generic drug industry into a few behemoths that compete only on price and have foreign plants that are rarely inspected.
“The race to the bottom has led to an increase of products coming from plants in China and India that may have uncertain supply and may have never been inspected,” Ms. Bresch said. “If the F.D.A. was required to inspect foreign drug plants at the same rate it does domestic ones, we might not have so many of these shortages.”
Ms. Bresch has helped to broker an agreement that would require the industry to pay $299 million a year for increased inspections of foreign drug plants, a deal that must be approved by Congress and one she says will prevent some shortages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/health/policy/20drug.html?_r=1
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