From the article: you come to your own conclusion… profits over patient safety ?
“One pharmacist said she quit because she was worried that unqualified people were helping prepare dangerous narcotics for use by hospitals. A quality control technician said he tried to stop the production line when he noticed that some labels were missing, but was overruled by management. A salesman said he and his colleagues were brought into the sterile lab to help out with packaging and labeling during rush orders, something they were not trained for.”
“Six former employees, five from Ameridose and one from New England Compounding, described a corporate culture that encouraged shortcuts, even when that meant compromising safety. The former Ameridose pharmacist said she was concerned about a pilot project in which quality control workers, rather than trained pharmacists, did preliminary checks to make sure the correct drugs were present and the pumps were set correctly before filling intravenous bags.”
“The emphasis was always on speed, not on doing the job right,” said the quality control technician who tried to stop the production line and who said he was eventually fired over disagreements about safety. “One of their favorite phrases was ‘This line is worth more than all your lives combined, so don’t stop it.’ ”
“In 2008, an F.D.A. inspector found that Ameridose did not do appropriate testing to determine potency of a drug, according to a 2010 summary of the inspection report in an industry newsletter, Validation Times. The company was also shipping drugs without waiting the 14 days it took for the sterility test results to come back from an outside lab, the newsletter said.”
“A former New England Compounding salesman was less charitable. The man, who worked for the company from 2008 to 2011, said it was standard practice to sell large quantities of medicine to buyers without patients’ names. Buyers would later fax the names as the medicine was dispensed, and the names would be put in their file, he said. According to state law, compounding pharmacies are permitted to ship medicines only for specific patients. “Honestly, there’s no way you could sell anything of quantity otherwise,” he said.”
Filed under: General Problems
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