Hospitals Battle Drug Shortages

Hospitals scramble on the front lines of drug shortages

Shortages of prescription drugs have been a growing concern for the past six years. They nearly tripled from 2005 to 2010 and reached record levels in 2011 as manufacturers ceased operations or ran into production problems. The Food and Drug Administration has been scrambling to respond, helping firms resume production more quickly and approving emergency imports of supplies. Recent approvals of new suppliers helped ease shortages of two crucial cancer drugs.

In some cases, lifesaving treatments have been delayed, sending patients on desperate searches for needed medicines, doctors say. Shortages have also caused injuries from mistakes and at least 15 deaths around the country since mid-2011, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit that tracks medication errors. The mistakes included confusion about dosing and preparation of substitutes.

Shortfalls are so common that pharmacy staffers at hospitals are spending many extra hours to ensure an uninterrupted flow of medicine to cancer patients, victims of heart attacks and accidents, and a host of other ill people.

Hmm, pharmaceutical  companies make drugs so they can make a profit; no make drugs, no make profit.  About the only things that could interfere in that would be for someone to try to limit the profit to be made, or to regulate the making of drugs to the point that it was no longer profitable.

I wonder how that could happen?