Last fall’s deadly meningitis outbreak linked to contaminated steroid injections is a tragic reminder of the risk of errors inherent in manual pharmacy medication compounding. Unsanitary conditions at the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy that made the injections resulted in fungal contamination of the drugs. The resulting outbreak sickened nearly 700 people in 19 states and killed more than 40.
Tennessee, where the unusual cases of meningitis first came to light, was particularly hard-hit. One of only two states with more than 100 cases linked to the contaminated injections, Tennessee has seen 150 cases of illness and 14 deaths to date. New maladies related to the injections continue to be diagnosed six months later.
Although this outbreak is an egregious example of medication compounding gone awry, it is hardly an isolated incident. Over the past few weeks, three compounding pharmacies — in Georgia, Massachusetts and New Jersey — have issued recalls due to suspected contamination in their products. These are symptoms of a much larger problem.
In December, the journal American Health & Drug Benefits reported that medication errors from injectable drugs harm more than 1 million patients annually in U.S. hospitals. Adverse drug events due to injectable medications cost U.S. health care payers between $2.7 billion to $5.1 billion annually, an average of $600,000 per hospital.
What is perhaps most tragic is that the technology to prevent it is already available. Automated compounding systems have existed for more than a decade, but too few pharmacies use them.
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