Medications are a critical player in the healthcare system, and are necessary to maintain or improve a certain level of health and wellness. As discussed in chapter one of our text, prescribed medications are considered a tertiary prevention in that they are to "reduce the impact of an already established disease by minimizing disease-related complications." (Niles, 2018, p.3) Medications are either brand name (meaning that the manufacturer has completed necessary research and development, marketing, as well as promoting) or generic. (Stoppler, n.d.) According to the FDA's web page on this topic (Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, n.d.), generic medications are developed when a manufacturer's exclusivity period is close to expiring, …show more content…
For instance, Claritin (brand name) is a popular over the counter (OTC) allergy medication. Its generic form, loratadine, has the same active ingredients as Claritin; however, has different inactive ingredients that may cause negative reactions. According to one of the product's information pages (LORATADINE - ORAL (Claritin) side effects, medical uses, and drug interactions, n.d.), "This product may contain inactive ingredients, which can cause allergic reactions or other problems." So although this generic medication may be less expensive to the consumer, it may have different side effects than the brand name …show more content…
(Purse, 2017) The manufacturing process for generic drugs may occur in facilities where there is an increased risk of contamination as many of them are manufactured in foreign countries where there are less quality control measures in processing. ("Pros and Cons of Generic Drugs", 2014) Another disadvantage is that when multiple manufactures produce the same generic drug, they may vary in appearance including shape, color, or impression of symbols or numbers. ("Pros and Cons of Generic Drugs", 2014) A certified pharmacy technician explained that customers can be confused when they pick up their medications, and it looks different from the previous times they had their prescriptions
Many other drugs also lose patent protection leading to the creation of substitutes that are cheaper.
There is also a slight issue between consumer and manufacturer as both are in dis-agreement of keeping up with cool chain requirements. This is an operational issue as from an employer and employee perspective their always needs to be a good relationship between manufacture and consumer as the pharmaceutical products needs to have high level in security measures and the manufacturer intrusts the consumer with his products. This is related to another issue found with theft in organisation MISHAIR.
In the UK, there are more than 1 billion scripts prescribed and dispensed every year (HSCIC, 2013). There are over 12,000 pharmacies in the UK, and approximately 1.6 million people visit a pharmacy every day (HSCIC, 2013). It is therefore natural to assume that between these 1 billion prescriptions, an error or mistake will be made. Current studies suggest that of all the dispensed medicines, there are approximately 0.01-3.32% errors made in community pharmacy and 0.02-2.7% in hospital pharmacy (James et all, 2009).
Pharmaceutical companies are provided with temporary monopoly rights on the production of new drugs which result in a higher cost on consumers. If competing companies were allowed to produce generic forms of those drugs, consumers will be able to afford those medications even in cases where those consumers have no insurance coverage. The company responsible for developing and inventing the original medication could be offered incentives to invent in the future by either obtaining tax breaks or NIH funding for future research. They could even be offered a percentage of the sales of the generic drugs. Economist Gary S. Becker advocates dropping many FDA requirements that, in his opinion, provide no additional safety measures but rather delay the development of new drugs.[12] Betamethasone, for example, has been part of the standard prenatal care in Europe since the late 1970’s while it got adopted in the U.S. after 1997. On many occasions, the FDA ignores all scientific evidence concerning certain drugs because the manufacturer did not follow their mandated bureaucratic standards.
According to pharmacist T. Perryman, the errors he sees the most in the pharmacy setting “occurs when hospital made barcodes are being added to the medication rather than the medication having factory barcodes already present.” The process of standardizing all pharmaceutical drug
Product liability laws allow drug users to sue the manufacture, not the FDA, for any adverse drug reactions and side effects. While the FDA oversees drug safety, they do not ensure it. To avoid the costs associated with lawsuits and the risk of a bad name, drug companies do their best to fully, sometimes overly test products before release. “When product liability law attempts to ensure safety already assured by the FDA, prices may be inefficiently high due to liability costs that do not deter manufacturers from producing unsafe products” (Philipson & Sun, 2008, p. 86).
Goal 3: Safe Medication Identification. Unlabeled syringes and medications are your biggest threats. Labeling all medications at dispensing areas ensures better identification. Knowing what your patients are taking directly impacts their treatment plan. Medication reconciliation decreases the possibility of drug interactions.
Prescription drugs, on the other hand, are medicines that have been approved by the Food and Drug
E. Generic drugs can have different manufacturers, which mean they can also have different inactive ingredients in it.
In the pharmaceutical world, payers have switched to the generic brand over the brand-name drugs (The Commonwealth Fund, 2016). Although efforts to slow down the costs of healthcare might have work a little bit. A recent report shows spending has grew 5.7 percent in the past year (Altarum Institute, 2015).
The threat of substitution of new products can be high or low depending on the type of product offered. If there are two similar products in the market then there is a high threat of substitution of new products. Pfizer's Zyrtec allergy medicine faces high threat from substitute products because of the availability of over-the-counter and generic allergy products that are available. If a product is unique to the industry, then there is low threat of substitution. Pfizer takes a pro-active approach against the threat from product substitutes by making and marketing generic versions of their drugs through the generic subsidiary named Greenstone. Most recently, as of July 1, 2006, Greenstone is making the generic version of
Not only does the electronic method of prescribing save time, it has also cut down on the number of accidents caused by the misinterpretation of handwriting. Although now almost obsolete, hand-written prescriptions have been the cause of many medical errors because certain sound-alike or look-alike drugs have, in the past, been incorrectly substituted for one another. A report given by the insurance company, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield disclosed that if all physicians were to begin using electronic-prescription systems, “more than two million adverse reactions or events – ranging from inconsequential to severe – could be avoided each year” (wgrz.com). According to pharmacist and associate director for the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Drug Safety, Jerry Phillips, “Six-hundred sound-alike or look-alike drug pairs have been identified as possible sources of error since 1992” (nytimes.com). For example, Lamictal, a mood-stabilizing anticonvulsant, is quite similar in spelling to Lamisil, an antifungal drug. Because of these strong similarities, it is not difficult to understand how easy it could be for medical personnel to mistake certain medications. But with e-prescribing, because the prescription is sent directly from the prescriber to the pharmacy, the number of accidents caused by misinterpretation of handwriting has already been
This is a journal study to investigate the perceptions and opinions of the professional community pharmacy staff about the causes of dispensing errors and strategies to prevent these errors. A survey was completed by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in 49 community pharmacies and the response rate was 90.9% (Lopes, Joaquim, Matos & Pires, 2015). Handwritten prescriptions were the most single cause of medication errors 51.5% and drugs with similar packages 45.6% (Lopes et al., 2015). Checking prescriptions and confirmation of drugs through barcodes was 97% which were the most agreed prevention methods (Lopes et al., 2015). This article would not only be useful to pharmacy personnel but to other health practitioners or students performing research. In addition, a study similar to this could serve as an example (initiative) that may benefit management. Such initiative would be implemented to help improve medication
Even though the capital requirements are less demanding in generic pharmaceuticals, it is still a very expensive venture and extremely competitive, making it hard to penetrate as well. The biosimilar industry is undeveloped and competition is scarce, but it takes a lot of money and expertise to produce products that are as complex as these pharmaceuticals.
In the United States, a drug can only be advertised legally after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Once attaining at least one FDA-approved use, physicians can prescribe a drug for other unapproved uses, based on their clinical judgment; this is referred to as “off-label use” (McCambridge, 2008). In general, marketing drugs for off-label uses is illegal; however, pharmaceutical companies have gone to various lengths within their legal rights to accomplish exactly that.