Protonix shortage

deespoohbear · Jan 17, 2003

Oh gee, that would be great. Protonix is our hospital formulary drug (substituted for Prevacid, Prilosec, & Aciphex..) Personally, my hubby says that the Protonix is worthless so I shell out big bucks to get him Prevacid. Doesn't save me any money to use the house formulary if my husband is sick all the time because of GERD....I will have to check into that shortage thing. One of our pharmacists is a walking PDR and knows all about upcoming shortages and stuff....

anitame · Jan 17, 2003

Yep, we're out and substituting Pepcid. Go figure. The drug compaines marke these new drugs then can't keep up with the demand.

deespoohbear · Jan 17, 2003

How can they be subsituting Pepcid for Protonix? Pepcid is a H2 antagonist, Protonix is a gastric pump inhibitor....They should be using Prevacid, Prilosec, or Aciphex for the Protonix.....

deespoohbear · Jan 17, 2003

If you are talking about Protonix IV being in short supply then that is a different ball of wax. Protonix IV is the only gastric pump inhibitors available for IV use. So the pharmacy would have to use something like Pepcid or Zantac IV for subsitution. We don't have Protonix IV available at our facility, so if it is in short supply I wouldn't know.....

memphispanda, RN · Jan 17, 2003

Originally posted by deespoohbear
Oh gee, that would be great. Protonix is our hospital formulary drug (substituted for Prevacid, Prilosec, & Aciphex..) Personally, my hubby says that the Protonix is worthless so I shell out big bucks to get him Prevacid. Doesn't save me any money to use the house formulary if my husband is sick all the time because of GERD....I will have to check into that shortage thing. One of our pharmacists is a walking PDR and knows all about upcoming shortages and stuff....

I think they just came out with generic for prevacid. Might save some $$!

meownsmile, BSN, RN · Jan 17, 2003

sorry it may have been me in my question. I was referring to IV dosages. I guess i didnt make that clear. We get a lot of Protonix IV ordered and those are the orders that pharmacy usually will call us on and ask us to get a substitute order for. Sorry for not being as specific as i should have.

RN-PA, RN · Jan 17, 2003

That's news to me-- We use IV Protonix a lot at our hospital and I haven't heard about a shortage yet. I think I administered some this past week; I'll ask the pharmacy about it when I work this weekend.

BBFRN, BSN, PhD · Jan 18, 2003

Yep, we haven't received any orders for Protonix IV on our floor lately, either.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jan 20, 2003

We've been substituing po Prevacid when IV Protonix is ordered.

If the patient is NPO, I think they are getting Pepcid.

rreed · Feb 2, 2003

shortage where I work in the IV Protonix, pharmacy comes around every day and ask if the pt is NPO, if not, they leave a note on the chart to change to PO.

I was told that the company will only give each facility so much, they arn't allowed to order what ever they think they will need, doesn't sound right to me, but that is what I was told.

Rachel

rileygrl11, BSN, RN · Feb 6, 2003

Same things going on in our facility as RREED said in post. Pharmacy comes around daily to check charts to see if pt is NPO. Our head pharmacy person said that there is a shortage of IV Protonix and it is difficult to get. Being on an oncology floor, this is not a good thing to hear. All of our cancer pts are on it, obviously.