Drug Shortages on Upswing

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Front Page Magazine:

According to a new report, medical facilities face an increasing shortage of important, and often life-saving, medications. While drug shortages are not uncommon, the number of them has tripled in the last five years, reaching a record number of 211 drugs in short supply in 2010. This year is no different, as another 89 drug shortages have occurred in the first three months of 2011, according to the University of Utah’s Drug Information Service which monitors shortages for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. What drives such shortages? Americans are getting a hard dose, if you’ll pardon the expression, of where removing the profit incentive from healthcare eventually leads.

The first clue is provided by Cynthia Reilly, director of practice development with the society of pharmacists, who contends the principal reason for drug shortages is the consolidation of drug manufacturers. ”Manufacturers will tell you they will never discontinue a drug because it’s not profitable,” she said, even as she noted that some drugs may be prioritized over others when such mergers occur. “Are there financial factors? I would say yes,” she added.

Echoing that reality was Valerie Jensen, who heads the Food and Drug Administration’s shortage office. She agrees that the overarching problem is fewer and fewer manufacturers producing medication, including older and cheaper generic drugs, especially injectable ones, which are harder to produce. Thus, if a company has difficulty making a drug, or decides to quit producing one altogether, there are fewer and fewer companies who can step in and fill the gap.

Injectable drugs constitute the vast majority of drugs used by medical centers in emergency rooms, Intensive Care Units and cancer wards, where shortages can last for as long as months, and where alternative medications are less-than-satisfactory substitutes for the real thing. How acute is the problem? ”It’s just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient’s life and we find out there isn’t any,” says Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians.