Articles
TRENTON, N.J. – A drug for dangerously high blood pressure, normally priced at $25.90 per dose, offered to hospitals for $1,200. Fifteen deaths in 15 months blamed on shortages of life-saving medications.
A growing crisis in the availability of drugs for chemotherapy, infections and other serious ailments is endangering patients and forcing hospitals to buy from secondary suppliers at huge markups because they can't get the medications any other way.
An Associated Press review of industry reports and interviews with nearly two dozen experts found the shortages — mainly of injected generic drugs that ordinarily are cheap — have delayed surgeries and cancer treatments, left patients in unnecessary pain and caused hospitals to give less effective treatments. That's resulted in complications and longer hospital stays.
Just over half of the 549 U.S. hospitals responding to a survey this summer by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a patient safety group, said they had purchased one or more prescription drugs from so-called "gray market vendors" — companies other than their normal wholesalers.
Most also said they've had to do so more often of late, and 7 percent reported side effects or other problems with those drugs.
Hospital pharmacists "are really looking at this as a crisis. They are scrambling to find drugs," said Joseph Hill of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists......................................................................
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire