Insight: Red flags ignored for years at firm in meningitis crisis

By Toni Clarke and Sharon Begley

BOSTON | Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:41pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - A cracked vial here, a missing label there. The complaints coming into New England Compounding Center, the firm at the heart of the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak, were piling up. In March, regulators responded to a complaint from the prestigious Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary about a potency concern involving one of the eye medications it purchased from NECC. The investigation is ongoing.
Over the summer, physicians at Ruby Memorial Hospital in West Virginia returned a bag of cardioplegia solution used in heart surgery after a patient did not respond as expected.
Testing showed the drug was not responsible, according to the hospital's pharmacy director, but the episode made at least one NECC sales representative uneasy.

I remember thinking, are we just selling too much?" he said. "Were we growing sales faster than our lab could handle?"
It is a question federal and state regulators are now examining.
Continue reading here