In the wake of a nationwide shortage of essential drugs used for hospital care, the House of Commons voted unanimously Wednesday in support of an NDP motion to require drug manufacturers to promptly report to Health Canada any anticipated disruptions in production.
The new policy is in response to a nationwide drug shortage that began last month when Sandoz Canada announced it would cancel or reduce drug production due to quality-control issues identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sandoz is the only supplier of 90 per cent of injectable painkillers and anesthetic drugs used in surgery, intensive care and emergency situations in Canadian hospitals.
"We support the intent of the motion to create another mechanism so this doesn't happen again," said Bob Zimmer, MP for Prince George-Peace River.
"It's a difficult one for us in the federal government because province manage their own health care and they've gone through a single supplier. When that particular supplier has a problem it creates a ripple effect. The fact they sole-sourced, it was their decision to made it cheaper for them, but it puts them in a precarious position."
Although the opposition parties wanted a requirement for drug companies to provide mandatory reporting of drug supplies to government authorities, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told CBC News she still supports voluntary disclosure from the manufacturers because it results in information on supplies being made available faster. But she said if the voluntary reporting proves ineffective she would consider bringing in regulations.
B.C. has weathered the storm of the injectable drug shortage better than some other provinces because all hospitals are tied to a regional health authority which co-ordinates their supply purchases through Heath Shared Services BC (HSSBC). The large economy of scale of HSSBC also results in cost savings that individual hospitals are less likely to achieve.
"We have used Heath Shared Services BC as a co-ordinating mechanism to deal with the shortage since we found out about it on Feb. 17," said Deborah Dunn-Roy, HSSBC's executive director of stakeholder relations.
"HSSBC contracts on behalf of all the health authorities so it wasn't like we had six organizations scrambling to try to deal with this on their own. In some provinces, hospitals are trying to deal with this on a hospital-by-hospital basis. Some hospitals in Ontario weren't even aware of the situation and we'd already been dealing with it for a week.
"We were able to get our strategy up and running very quickly and because we have a consolidated group of purchasing agents, they're very aware of the marketplace and were able to kick things into high gear."
HSSBC receives daily reports through consultations with the six health authorities to determine drug supplies and identify anticipated shortages. Northern Health hospitals helped replenish the dwindling stock of a drug used in coronary bypass surgery at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster and health authorities are being encouraged to share supplies of drugs that are not in high demand locally.
"We have a report card that signals to us when a drug might be going into short supply in a particular area, and then we're able to adjust accordingly," said Dunn-Roy. "We've had really good provincial collaboration between all of the health authorities, pharmacists, medical leads and the health authority CEOs."
HSSBC and the Ministry of Health are working with Alberta and Saskatchewan to try to find other sources of prescription drugs in other countries. In consultation with Health Canada, the western provinces are also trying to fast-track the approval process needed for those manufacturers to sell alternate drugs to Canadian health authorities.
