Drug shortages pose a clear detriment to antimicrobial stewardship (AS) efforts. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of a piperacillin-tazobactam shortage on meropenem use, related costs, and associated changes in AS activity. A quasi-experimental quality improvement review compared adult patients receiving meropenem ≥72h three months pre-shortage and three months during the shortage. 320 ...

Patient safety is one of the main concepts in the field of healthcare provision and a major component of health services quality. One of the important stages in promotion of the safety level of patients is identification of medication errors and their causes. Medical errors such as medication errors are the most prevalent errors that threaten health and are a global problem. Execution of medica...

BACKGROUND Drug reimportation is perceived as a costs-cutting strategy by Americans. Nonetheless, issues such as drug safety and efficacy prevent legalization of the practice. With the contradictory views from supporters and opponents, debate on drug reimportation continues to snowball. The objective of this commentary is to discuss issues regarding drug reimportation practices in the United St...

In 2014, I was on the Board of Directors of the Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) when Merck announced having shortages of Tice strain Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG), a critical “drug” for treating intermediate and particularly high risk non-muscle invasive (NMI) urothelial cancer (UC) of the bladder, including carcinoma-in-situ (CIS) and high-grade (HG), stage Ta and T1 disease after transure...