Tips for navigating the hospital drug shortage crisis

The drug shortage problem at numerous hospitals across the country is the worst that many in healthcare have experienced in recent years. Experts from the Premier healthcare alliance and other healthcare organizations say the vast majority of hospitals across the U.S. are dealing with life-threatening shortages of certain medications.

Making matters worse is the fact that gray market vendors are taking advantage of the situation and in many cases are selling alternative drugs at excessive prices. It is often unclear where the supplies originated from and whether or not they are even as effective.

The Premier healthcare alliance has developed a series of actions that should be taken to ensure reliable purchases during these difficult times. Premier has the best interest of hospitals in mind and these safety tips can be found by clicking here. The steps will help ensure that leaders in your hospital are in fact conducting business with legitimate suppliers only.

Some of the actions suggested include developing and communicating with staff a policy for purchasing decisions, considering when there will be exceptions to the policy and confirming with the proper authorities whether a supplier has the appropriate license.

Approximately 360 drugs could be unavailable by the end of the year. These are record drug shortages and they are creating very stressful situations for medical staff. As difficult as these situations are, we need to make sure that as we look for solutions we take the time to ensure we do everything possible not to compromise patient safety in the process.

Don Ammon blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.