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S P E C I A L
R E P O R T :
T A I N T E D
S T E R O I D S
Florida, New Jersey and Virginia. It seems unlikely right now that this will
bounce back on providers and facilities. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't
take care to mitigate your liability risk in a drug recall.
• Check it out. If you're already using or are going to use a compounding
facility, tour the premises and view operations. If you don't have the
resources for a trip, ask for documentation of their protocols and processes.
That way, if it turns out the pharmacy isn't doing what they represented to
you it's doing, you've got the paperwork to prove you did your due diligence.
• Have a rationale. If you're going to use a compounding pharmacy's
services, you need to document a demonstrable rationale besides costcutting. Needing more appropriately-sized quantities, needing specific formulations and unavailability of drugs commercially are solid reasons.
— William Landess, CRNA, MS, JD
Mr. Landess (william.landess@palmettohealth.org) is the director of anesthesia for Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia, S.C.
(Ohio). Some of those proactive patients are among the "2,500 we
have to contact, who had procedures since May. We explain that we
used the hyaluronidase and mitomycin, we pulled them the day before
the recall was issued, and there are no reports of cases with those
drugs. It's not fun, but we want to protect our doctors and our facility
— and we don't want patients panicking," says Mr. Herman.
The fallout for NECC? Permanent shutdown. Its sister companies,
Ameridose and Alaunus Pharmaceuticals, have been shuttered until at
least Nov. 5. As for the rest of the compounding pharmacy industry,
N O V E M B E R 2012 | O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
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