Half of US hospitals are turning to gray-market vendors as the country's drug shortage continues, a new survey has shown.

 

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has issued a safety alert based on its study of 549 hospitals, which indicates that 52% of respondents purchased one or more pharmaceutical products from back-door suppliers during the past two years.

 

Critical medications have become scarce over the last year, with 82% of 802 hospitals surveyed by the American Hospital Association in July reporting that they were forced to delay treatment because of the shortage.

 

Desperation of pharmacy directors and demanding patients have fuelled the transactions between the opportunist gray-market distributors who have been quick to sell inexplicably-obtained drugs at high prices, according to the ISMP.

 

The institute said in a statement, "Respondents feel unsupported by regulatory agencies that have not stepped in to control the gray market, betrayed by some pharmaceutical manufacturers or wholesalers who they presume may have sold medications in short supply to gray-market vendors, perplexed regarding how gray-market vendors know about pending drug shortages before hospitals do, outraged by the price gouging that accompanies the sale of these vital medications, and frustrated by the wasted time spent on unsolicited communications from gray-market vendors."

 

International pharmaceutical supply chain consortium Rx-360 has previously publicised that there are opportunities for non-compliant companies, unethical players and criminals to enter the supply chain and introduce substandard, contaminated, adulterated and counterfeit materials during drug shortages, often with tragic consequences.

 

In 2008, a shortage of raw material in China was one of the contributing factors to the adulteration of heparin which led to numerous deaths in the US and Europe.

 

The ISMP study has revealed that the most common reasons respondents did not purchase medications from gray-market vendors during the past two years were due to concerns with authenticity (74%), ethical concerns (66%), cost (69%), and the storage conditions prior to purchase (58%).