Tougher to care for sickest patients

Tougher to care for sickest patients

We are running out of drugs. The good kind. We’re running short on critical medications used in anesthesia and pain control, and to fight cancer and infections. These are medications hospitals and physicians use every day to care for some of our sickest patients.

What does that mean to patients? Increased risk. Sometimes hospitals don’t have the most ideal drug to treat patients. Physicians are being forced to prescribe medications they may not be as familiar with. Pharmacists and nurses must dispense and administer medications they may have never used. The cost of these alternative agents is often higher. That puts a financial burden on providers and patients. And shortages have gotten progressively worse in recent years — from 60 in 2005 to 200-plus critical drugs that were either unavailable or in short supply in 2011.

Massive consolidation in the manufacturing of generic drugs is the primary cause. Where there used to be five manufacturers of a particular drug, now there may be one or two. When one company goes offline, the remaining company has 100 percent of the market and often times can’t meet demand. Other causes include production delays, more stringent regulatory oversight, raw materials shortages, hoarding, pricing pressures, and discontinuation of products.

Additionally, the majority of raw materials come from outside the U.S. Geopolitical issues and natural disasters affecting other parts of the world can directly impact the availability of raw materials used in the production of these products.

Please urge your national and local elected officials to work with pharmaceutical suppliers to help us find solutions that return some sense of normalcy. It is incomprehensible that in the U.S. we do not have the medications necessary to treat our most critical patients.

Phillip C. Williams

Administrative director of pharmacy services

Edward Hospital and Health Services

Naperville