Prescription Drug Shortage: A Case Study

As a critical care nurse the concern with medication shortages really hits home. In my current practice I have been asked by our hospital pharmacy to decrease the amount of Ativan given to a patient because the supply was low and they did not have any more to restock our omnicell. I am unsure the reason behind this particular shortage, but several other drugs we currently use are in low supply, most importantly epinephrine. Epinephrine is a life-saving medication, not only for supply on our code carts for cardiac arrest, but available in injection form for people with severe allergies. The shortage affects everyone, from oncology patients to cardiac patients. Recent policy changes have been made in order to correct the major shortages to help keep these life-saving drugs on the market and available to the people that need them.

Prescription drugs are a huge problem right now in the United States, many people do not realize that these drugs are coming out of their pharmacies into hands of people who sell these drugs to addicts and the uneducated. In Drugs, Inc. DEA agent Tom Lenox argues, “Prescription pills are one of the most significant drug problem we are facing right now not just in California but nation wide in the Untied States” (2010-2014). The reason that prescription painkillers are so deadly and such a big problem is they are highly addictive as Drug, Inc. states, “more people succumb to painkillers then heroin and methamphetamine combined.” (2010-2014) Pharmacists tend to sell pills to support their own drug habits. Many pharmacists, even though they make

The National Institutes of Health found that “manufacturing problems and business decisions had caused twenty-three percent of drug shortages.” The FDA has currently listed sixty-two drugs undergoing a shortage. Forty-three of those are hospital injections for pediatrics.

Market failure appears when there is a failure in allocation of goods and services. When the market is unsuccessful, the government is called to intervene and correct the failure. Over the years, government participation in the pharmaceutical market has been more wide-ranging than any other good or service. With the government’s ability to regulate, mandate, inform, finance and provide, their intervention to overcome market failure can be beneficial for the economy. Market failure plays a significant role in today’s economy.

Medicine has been around for thousands of years and has diversified and given us many options to treat illness or pain. Some are available as over-the-counter drugs that can be purchased almost anywhere and others require you to get a prescription from your doctor in order to get it. Some of these drugs that require a prescription often help people who deal with chronic pain, those who are at the end of their life, or cancer patients. Unfortunately these drugs, although helpful to those who need them, are being abused by millions of Americans every year. With doctors prescribing ludicrous amounts of prescription drug, sometimes when it is not even necessary, and our lack of knowledge on the subject, prescription drug abuse has become a big

Pharmaceutical companies are all over this world, constantly showing how corrupt the industry is becoming and creating new data, and new advertisements, but what are these new pieces of data and advertisements? What are they saying? Prescription drug abuse has become a major health epidemic because of the increase use of prescribed drugs on college campuses, pharmaceutical companies misleading doctors and patients, and illegal trafficking.

Prescription drug crisis has jumped since 1999 and continues to grow. According to “Los Angeles Times”, “There are two quite different stories about why there is a prescription drug crisis in the United States, and why opiate-related deaths have quadrupled since 1999.” “LA Times” also states, “ In fact only 1 in 130 prescriptions for opiate such as Oxycontin or Percocet in the United States results in addiction, according to the

There is also the issue of many people forgoing certain needs in order to not have to reduce their prescription use. Rather than forcing themselves to space out their medication more than they are supposed to be as prescribed, these people start cost cutting in other areas of their lives. Many will forgo basic needs, such as food, in order to get to a point of affordability of their medication. This cost-cutting generally can occur before the gap, just as drug reduction does, and typically continues through the gap until catastrophic coverage is reached, or until they reach the next year and reset the entire process (Madden and Graves, 2009; Nekhlyudov and Madden, 2011; Zivin and Madden, 2009).

There is a major problem in this country that is not publicized by any major media outlet. In fact, it is almost as if the problem is actively ignored and swept under the rug. We are at war with drugs not the illegal drugs that are actively policed every day, but drugs prescribed by trusted medical doctors. The United States population consumes more prescription drugs than any other country in the world. In 2010 America alone accounted for over eighty percent of the global intake of prescription drugs (Zennie). That’s more than 110 tons of drugs being prescribed every year, which would be enough to give every single person in this country 64 pills. How can America need so much more drugs than everyone else in the world? The answer is simple we do not, but these drugs are continuously promoted and prescribed to the American public. This problem continues to increase exponentially, in the last ten years the consumption of these drugs have grown over 600% (Zennie). It is the governments job to raise awareness on this major problem effecting the American public. There are three ways the government can start to solve this problem: Starting a national campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs, increasing scrutiny of doctors when it comes to prescribing drugs, and the discontinuation of advertising prescription drugs.

When it comes to prescriptions, people ask: what are prescription drugs? Who benefits from prescription drugs and why are prescription drugs important to society? Throughout a person’s entire life, prescription drugs absorb the body and whether the issue is for headaches, cramps, or sickness, prescriptions is there to make a person feel better. Moreover, different types of prescription drugs treat different types of illnesses or reduce the symptoms. However, people do better toughing it out than taking a prescribed drug. A person who has a cold and is taking a prescribed drug has a higher risk of a disease while another person who has a cold and is not taking a prescription drug does not. Due to the issues, prescription drugs need to reform

Anyone who has purchased prescription medication has probably wondered why they cost so much. The pharmaceutical industry consist of thousands of firms engaged in one or several functions of discovering, developing, manufacturing and marketing medicines for human use. The price paid to a retail pharmacy for a drug is negotiated by the PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Manager) and the pharmacy or pharmacy chain. The pharmacy is left with an option of refusing the business, raising its prices for cash customers or reducing its operation margin. Rising prices for goods encourage producers to find ways of supplying more also guiding purchasers to switch to cheaper alternatives. The price mechanism encourages the productive and careful employment of scarce resources and directs innovative efforts where they are most needed.

medications , and the specialty pharmacy gold rush is on. The battle to control the patient

The lack of chemotherapy drugs can present an enormous impact on healthcare. According to McKeever, Bloch, & Bratic (2013), the lack of chemotherapy agents generates a enormous predicament as oncology patients undergoing treatment cannot be switched to another chemotherapy drug without consequences. If there were a acceptable replacement as evident by previous randomized clinical trials, then equal dosing would exist. 99.5% of hospitals experience pharmaceutical drug shortages as stated by the American Hospital Association. Unpredictable access to reliable substitutes not only puts the patient’s life at risk but also puts a weight on caregivers and healthcare providers. In fact,

With regards to how drug shortages influence medication safety, I learned that drug shortages compromise patient care. In one of the passages, I read about the shortage of a chemotherapy drug, a hospital did not have enough of the medication for a full treatment and a patient received less than the dose required for his therapy. If the full dose was regulating his tumor, giving the patient a lower dose would not provide the desired effect. Consequently, manufactures are not required to report drug shortages to the FDA. Furthermore, the FDA does not regulate the number of drugs being made. In my opinion, the FDA should work closely with manufactures to maintain an adequate supply of drug production.

This paper describes the background of drug shortages in the United States. The stakeholders, political, social, economic, and practical factors surrounding this topic are identified. In advising the current presidential administration, three possible options to mitigate this problem are presented. Of the three possible interventions, option two is the best option. If 42% of all drug shortages are related to quality, and 35 % are manufacturing issues, then logical upstream thinking aimed at fixing the quality and manufacturing facilities in the U.S. is the best option. Option three is feasible. Proceeding with option three would help to alleviate drug shortages; but it is more challenging to monitor quality and manufacturing practices