Drug Shortage Crisis Grows

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Front Page Magazine:

We face a crisis of drug shortages. Some hospital patients now have to take medications that aren’t effective. For others, treatment is dangerously delayed. Life-saving or life-prolonging medicines are increasingly in short supply for the one in ten Americans hospitalized on any particular day.

The Obama Administration is partly to blame. The crisis may worsen as the ObamaCare bureaucracy controls all aspects of health care in America.

A new survey released by the American Hospital Association (AHA) with responses from 820 facilities across the country reveals “serious consequences for patient care and access to vital therapies.”

With increasing frequency of drug shortages, the AHA survey revealed that “almost 100 percent of hospitals reported a shortage in the last six months and nearly half of the hospitals reported 21 or more drug shortages.”

Some hospitals were able to find alternative sources for drugs in short supply. But:

Hospitals report they have delayed treatment (82 percent of the time) and more than half were not always able to give patients the prescribed treatment.

Patients got a less effective drug (69 percent of the time).

Hospitals experienced drug shortages across all treatment categories.

Most hospitals rarely or never received advance notification of drug shortages (77 percent) or were not informed about the cause of the shortage (67 percent).

The majority of all hospitals reported increased drug costs resulting from the shortages.

Most hospitals are being forced to buy more expensive alternative drugs from other sources.

“The number of drugs in short supply is increase at an alarming rate and hospitals are working diligently to reduce the impact on the patients they care for,” said AHA President and CEO Rich Umbdenstock.