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SAFETY
glycopyrrolate are in short supply today, but your compounder can
prepare them for you so you have them on hand when you need them.
Compounding labs can repackage your large-volume, single-dose vials
of propofol into smaller, unit-of-use syringes, saving you money and
stretching the supply of the sedative-hypnotic that always seems to be
in short supply. And what about your patients who can't swallow? A
compounder can formulate an oral drug into a cream.
This list of benefits of partnering with a compounding lab goes on and
on, but as the compounding pharmacy industry moves on from the
worst pharmaceutical disaster in decades, it's fair to ask some tough
questions. How do you evaluate compounding pharmacies in order to
have the best chance of avoiding mishaps like 2012's deadly meningitis
outbreak, which was linked to contaminated doses of epidural steroid
injections from a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy? How do you
know that the sterile compounding pharmacy you're considering is wor-
thy of your trust and your business?
More oversight and scrutiny
It all starts and stops with the now-shuttered New England
Compounding Center (NECC). In 2012, NECC shipped contaminated
steroid shots to facilities in 23 states. The shots caused the outbreak
that killed 64 people and sickened 741 others with fungal infections,
making it the country's worst drug disaster in recent memory. It was
later discovered that NECC was essentially manufacturing drugs in
unsterile conditions, not compounding.
Lawmakers blamed the meningitis outbreak on a lack of regulatory
oversight at the state level. To that point, compounding pharmacies
had been inconsistently regulated. They fell under the uneven authori-
ty of the states' boards of pharmacy, not the FDA. Unlike drug manu-
facturers, the pharmacies didn't have to register with the FDA or even
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