[Pharmwaste] Fw: FYI re: Unused drugs -

[greene.cynthia at epamail.epa.gov]

FYI




Cynthia L. Greene
Senior Advisor
US EPA New England
1 Congress Street, Suite 1100 (SPP)
Boston, MA 02114-2023
Tel: 617-918-1813
Fax: 617-918-0813
greene.cynthia at epa.gov
http://www.epa.gov/region1/solidwaste/index.html
----- Forwarded by Cynthia Greene/R1/USEPA/US on 12/19/2005 11:23 AM
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             Nelson/R1/USEPA/                                           
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             12/19/2005 09:47                                        cc 
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                                                                Subject 
                                      FYI re: Unused drugs -            
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                        





                              Polish News Bulletin

                           December 13, 2005 Tuesday

HEADLINE: Hospitals to Pay for Unused Drugs?

BYLINE: pkjw

SOURCE: 13 December issue of Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 7

BODY:     The National Health Fund (NFZ) has an interesting new idea for
saving money,
and more precisely - an idea for hospitals to save money. The NFZ wants
them to
pay for left-over drugs. This concerns especially the most expensive
drug
treatments used in transplantology, oncology and urology. Sometimes only
a
portion of a drug is used, for example in treatment of children, and the
left-over often has to be discarded. "Thanks to the new solution, more
patients
will receive the drugs, as they will be distributed more rationally,"
says the
NFZ's Andrzej Purzycki. "That's rubbish," says Stanislaw Prywinski, a
hospital
manager from Bydgoszcz. "Doctors know perfectly well that oncological
drugs are
expensive, so they manage them economically." Hospital managers in
general are
appalled by the NFZ's idea. "There are two solutions: either the idea is
dropped; or the government forces pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs
in
smaller containers," another manager told Gazeta Wyborcza.

LOAD-DATE: December 12, 2005