Pharmacy Daily | Hospital drug shortages

PHARMACEUTICAL therapy shortages in hospitals are more prevalent than previously understood, according to a Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA) snapshot survey of pharmacists across Australian hospitals.

The impact has been exacerbated by pharmaceutical suppliers advising of shortages just 15% of the time, causing negative patient health outcomes in one third of cases, the study revealed.

The de-identified results gathered by directors of pharmacy and members of the SHPA from 280 metropolitan, regional and rural health service facilities revealed stop-gap solutions such as ordering medicines from overseas or using emergency stock were commonplace, while shortages information was highly unreliable.

SHPA president Professor Michael Dooley said the results showed the extent of shortages across Australian hospitals was broad, and worsening, with monitoring processes failing to keep up.

"Hospital pharmacists' reported 1,577 individual shortages across a wide range of medicine classes, almost 40 per cent being antimicrobial medicines, with anaesthetics, cardiology medicines, endocrinology medicines and chemotherapies rounding out the top five," Dooley said.

"There are also worrying signs beyond the data - anecdotally, many pharmacists contacted SHPA saying they wanted to list additional shortages, but ran out of time," he added.

Dooley said corrective action reported in response to medicines shortages added time and significant cost to hospital and impacted on quality of patient care.

SHPA ceo Kristin Michaels said while hospital pharmacists are working to manage shortages at the coalface, regulating supply and demand was a national issue.

"Government action to address this issue has precedent, with Canada and Slovakia recently regulating the reporting of shortages of medicines and vaccines by manufacturers and wholesalers," Michaels concluded.