INTRODUCTION The number of drug shortages in the United States has increased in recent years. While some literature exists on factors that contribute to antimicrobial shortages, the need remains to accurately gage the level of patient harm incurred as a result of realized antimicrobial shortages. Furthermore, current methods of reporting adverse drug events are known to under-report instances o...

BACKGROUND From 2012 through 2014, the United States experienced acute shortages and price escalations of several first-line anti-tuberculosis (TB) medications. Because secondary TB drug regimens are longer and adverse events occur more frequently with them, we sought to conservatively estimate the cost, to patients and the health care system, of TB treatment and medication adverse events from ...

In an era of bacterial resistance, recently highlighted by the WHO global report on surveillance (1), choosing the best antimicrobial agent is more complex than ever. Prescribing the appropriate antimicrobial agent no longer involves simply selecting an empirical or definitive agent that will appropriately target the causative pathogens for a given patient; it also involves choosing the best ag...

Drug supply shortages are common in health systems due to manufacturing and other delays. Frequently, shortages are successfully addressed through conservation and redistribution efforts, with limited impact on patient care. However, when Sandoz Canada Inc. announced in February 2012 that it was reducing production of a number of generic injectable drugs at its Quebec facility, the scope and ma...

BACKGROUND Drug shortages and increasing generic drug prices are associated with low levels of competition. Mergers and acquisitions impact the level of competition. Record merger and acquisition activity was reported for the pharmaceutical sector in 2014/15, yet information on mergers and acquisitions in the generic drug sector are absent from the literature. This information is necessary to u...

Thank you for the editorial, “Anatomy of a Drug Shortage” (Mayer, 2012), published in the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing. I work at a community cancer center in the Midwest, and we have been forced to refer patients to larger facilities for them to even have a chance at receiving the treatment they require. For example, a patient with hairy cell leukemia was referred elsewhere to receive ...

PURPOSE A medical center's implementation of adult and pediatric parenteral nutrition (PN) algorithms and other strategies for managing PN ingredient shortages are described. SUMMARY In response to nationwide shortages of amino acids and other PN ingredients in 2010, a large Massachusetts teaching hospital undertook a quality-improvement initiative to ensure appropriate patient selection for ...