Shoddy practices and unsanitary conditions at three large-scale specialty pharmacies have been tied to deaths and illnesses over the past decade, revealing that the serious safety lapses at a Massachusetts pharmacy linked to last fall’s deadly meningitis outbreak were not an isolated occurrence, records and interviews show.
The series of safety failures happened long before national attention focused on the New England Compounding Center, whose contaminated steroid shots were linked to 45 deaths and 651 illnesses.
A Washington Post analysis found that state and federal authorities did little to systematically inspect and correct hazards posed by specialty pharmacies, which custom-mix medications for individual patients, hospitals and clinics. In the lightly regulated industry, pharmacies were rarely punished even when their mistakes had lethal consequences.
The Post reviewed hundreds of records, including lawsuits and Food and Drug Administration documents, and interviewed dozens of government and industry officials. The review found serious problems at three of 15 large-scale compounding pharmacies that dominate the industry. These multimillion-dollar companies mass-produce medications and ship them across state lines, often without individual patient prescriptions.
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