A large team of doctors, pharmacists, and nurses began assembling every morning to confront an emerging crisis with the potential to severely undermine care for patients.
...Amid a nationwide crisis caused by too-easy access to medical painkillers, hospitals are now struggling to find enough of that same class of drugs to keep their patients’ pain controlled.
...noting that regulators have made limited headway in addressing shortages over the past decade...
...the response to it is being impaired by some of the legal controls surrounding these drugs.
In order to increase the supply of injectable opioids, the Drug Enforcement Administration, which regulates the distribution of controlled substances, must lift quotas on smaller manufacturers to allow them to make more.
But despite requests from these manufacturers and a wide array of hospital and patient groups, the DEA has not yet granted enough extra capacity to resolve the shortage.
We’ve made multiple inquiries starting in January, and we just sent in more this week,” said Dan Motto, executive vice president for U.S. injectables at West-Ward Pharmaceutical Corp., the second-largest supplier of these opioids...”"
