Can­cer drug short­ages, sub­se­quent price hikes re­main a dark cloud over pa­tient care cen­ters

A vast ma­jor­i­ty of can­cer cen­ters are still grap­pling with gener­ic drug short­ages, ac­cord­ing to a sur­vey by the Na­tion­al Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Net­work (NC­CN). Fa­cil­i­ties in­ter­viewed by End­points News al­so not­ed that the short­age is dri­ving the prices for these can­cer drugs up­wards.

“It’s forc­ing physi­cians to make very tough de­ci­sions about who to give drugs to and that’s a very un­com­fort­able place to be,” Pontchar­train Can­cer Cen­ter CEO Kathy Oubre told End­points in an in­ter­view. “In our fa­cil­i­ties … every­one is get­ting the drugs, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly on the time­lines that they’re sup­posed to,” Oubre added.

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