Drugs For Critically Ill In Short Supply – Nashville News Story – WSMV Nashville.
Pharmer’s been telling you…. drugs for critical care, and for chemotherapy have been in short supply like never before.
Above is an article highlighting the severe electrolyte shortage we’ve been juggling for many months at the hospital pharmacies.
TPN (total parenteral nutrition) has been a big challenge as hospitals change and juggle products and ration in response to the shortages. The multivitamin supplement and vitamin C supply has been a problem since last year. Patients are now having multivitamins added into their TPN formulations on a staggered basis.
Changing to different drug products with different concentrations has increased the error rate as personnel adjust to the new concentrations.
The electrolyte shortage, in particular, is largely influenced by quality control and oversight issues at American Regent, one of the few suppliers of these drugs.
The FDA, has not been effective in balancing the oversight of quality control with the risks of short or no supply of essential drug products. This is is either by design, (to relieve the financial pressure of medicare and social security), or just because it’s the usual inefficient government organization, or a bit of both.
