Doctors all over the U.S. are turning to old treatments as they face shortage of important drugs that are used in regular surgeries or for treating diseases like cancer.
Hospitals are paying much higher prices than the actual cost of medicine to treat their patients as suppliers are stockpiling the medicines.
The issue of low supply is mostly being faced due to manufacturing and issues of quality control in many companies. One of the companies, Hospira Inc. based in Lake Forest, produces prescription medicines that are generic and injectable, but they are facing quality control issues as federal government has taken drug safety into consideration.
The safety concerns range from putting toxins and particulates into medicines to workers not filling out correct paper work to show that drugs and the devices that are used to inject the medicine into the patient work safely and effectively.
After going through the inspection process when a company re-starts production, it takes extra time to clear the backlog and in case of injectable drugs, long lead time is required to produce the medicine.
Thomas Wheeler, who has been a hospital pharmacist for the past three decades alongwith being Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center ‘s director of the pharmacy department said that this is the worse shortage he has ever seen and that the biggest problem with most drugs is for the critical ones that have no alternative and are used for cancer treatment and surgeries.
According to American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, there are around 150 drugs that are short in supply while 60 drugs out of these are considered as medically necessary by officials of federal health. These medicines include prescription medicine used to prevent or treat serious diseases.
The drug-makers are following the rules and regulations implemented by U.S. Food and Drug Administration since they are making sure that no unsafe medicine comes into the market.
The drug shortage issue is now in the attention of members of Congress. Last week legislation was introduced that requires drug-makers to inform FDA in advance when a factor arises that may result in shortage of drug supply.