Assessing Relationships Between Drug Shortages in the United States and Other Countries

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mulcahy, Andrew W.

Contributor:

Agniel, Denis

Kareddy, Vishnupriya

Levin, Jonathan S.

Rao, Preethi

Schwam, Daniel

Language:

English

Place of Publication:

Santa Monica, Calif. RAND Corporation 2021

Summary:

Drug shortages, which occur when the supply of drugs does not meet the demand, are a persistent policy and public health concern in the United States and in other countries. Shortages can adversely affect the quality and safety of care provided to patients, and they have implications for morbidity and mortality. Although there is broad international agreement about the importance of mitigating or preventing drug shortages, approaches to defining and tracking them remain fragmented. As a result, the extent to which drug shortages are truly global in nature is often unclear. The authors of this report contribute to the developing literature on the global scope of drug shortages by assessing whether U.S. drug shortages result in (1) measurable changes in U.S. volume, price, and other metrics, and (2) measurable changes in the same outcomes in other countries. The authors combined information from two U.S. drug shortage databases, one from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the other from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). The authors also used international prescription drug market data from IQVIA's MIDAS database. They found that most U.S. shortages appear to be domestic in scope. The most-severe U.S. shortages, measured by decreases in volume, only occasionally affected other countries in the same way. Although it is important to keep the global perspective in mind when addressing drug shortages, regulators, other policymakers, and the entire health care system should explore ways to leverage the supply of drugs in other countries in response to U.S. shortages.