Impact of the Global Medical Supply Chain on SNS Operations and Communications: Proceedings of a Workshop by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health and Medicine: Health Sciences, Health and Medicine: Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2018-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

GATHERING AND SHARING INFORMATION ON SHORTAGES

Several participants noted gaps in the collection and dissemination of information on shortages and suggested ways to address this issue.

Rubinson, recalling government experience in his recent past, described a lack of data streams adequate to reflect critical resource needs at the hospital level. Hospitals tend not to share data, and electronic health records are noisy with regard to reflecting supply signals, he observed. He questioned whether any progress has been made toward improving and interpreting such data at the hospital level. Not yet, Burel replied, although DSNS certainly recognizes its value.

In Maryland, a program called HC Standard allows public health officials to query hospital inventories for specific drugs and equipment, Romanosky noted. The state also employs syndromic surveillance; emergency departments throughout the state automatically upload their patients’ chief complaints, clinician impressions, final diagnoses, and other relevant information, some of which is linked to electronic medical records. Syndromic surveillance is now being used to track opioid overdoses and deaths in near real time, he reported, but accumulated data can be queried for any condition of interest. Surveillance can also be pushed closer to real time during significant events, such as the presidential inauguration, he added.

Trade associations represent an important conduit of information during shortages, Roszak observed. NACDS can connect state or federal officials with representatives of nearly 100 chain drug stores, who in turn could alert stores in affected areas about a shortage, she advised. This is exactly what happened during the H1N1 epidemic, when NACDS spearheaded an effort to distribute vaccine to chain pharmacies that resulted in the rapid administration of approximately 12 million doses of vaccine, she reported; a similar recent effort targeted Zika.

Since 2012, FDA has been mandated to maintain a drug shortage list on its website (FDA, 2018), and manufacturers have been required to report drug shortages to the agency, Grossman stated; the same statute allows health care providers and third-party organizations to report drug shortages to FDA. Unfortunately, he said, FDA’s presentation of shortage information lacks suggestions for substitutions; is organized according to manufacturer; and in the case of drugs not under patent, does not indicate whether every manufacturer is experiencing a shortage. Also, it fails to identify local shortages. On the positive side, Grossman noted, the website has an email feed and an android application with an alert function. Grossman observed that it is important for the entire health care community to become aware of this resource, and he said that improving FDA’s timeliness in updating the list could better serve the needs of health care providers and third-party distributors.

__________________

1 An N95 respirator is a particular type of protective device that blocks at least 95 percent of very small test particles, providing better filtration capabilities than a typical face mask. For more information on N95 respirators, see https://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/GeneralHospitalDevicesandSupplies/PersonalProtectiveEquipment/ucm055977.htm (accessed January 24, 2018).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.