As EpiPen Prices Skyrocket, Nurses Suggesting Patients Use Syringes

[DoGoodThenGo]

Media and now Congress has finally latched onto something many in healthcare have known for quite sometime; EpiPen prices have skyrocketed to $600 from $100 over the past eight years. Families/persons who need these autoinjectors are quite angry because not all can afford the increased rates and worry about being priced out of having access to life saving medication.

According to news reports some nurses and other healthcare professionals are advising patients and or their parents/caregivers to use syringes to inject epinephrine instead. One horrified mother interviewed for local evening news was literally near tears saying she "never could do that" when advised by a nurse who was part of her daughter's medical team. Many EMS personnel have long gone back to syringes as a cost saving measure with the prices of EpiPens putting a strain on budgets.

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

WOW Mylan's EpiPen had 3.6 million outpatient prescriptions written last year per article below.

3,600,000 RX X $55.00 profit/unit per CEO = $198,000,000 profit.

From Institute for Safe Medication Practices

What price must we pay for safety? Excessive cost of EPINEPHrine auto-injectors leads to error-prone use of ampuls or vials and unprepared consumers

This is what I am afraid of. Epinephrine is a very effective thing... in fact, it is deadly effective, and for no means "safe" one. It can kill as easy as save a life, especially if used by untrained bystanders.

We recently got a patient whose ETOH overdose was mistaken for anaphylaxis, and two Epipens (administered by a restaurant manager with no medical training save for "allergy awareness" taught by Mylan rep) led to intracranial bleed with outcome beyond devastating.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Found at CNBC.com

Mylan 'incorrectly' classified EpiPens, shortchanging government: Regulators

...CMS' comments came after a trio of U.S. senators wrote the Justice Department asking if it was considering an investigation of whether Mylan violated the law "when it apparently misclassified its EpiPen product for the purposes of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program."

"The facts laid out ... suggest that Mylan may have knowingly missclassified EpiPens, potentially in violation of the False Claims Act and other statutes," said the letter from Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Under the Medicaid rebate program, Mylan is paying Medicaid a rebate of 13 percent for every EpiPen it sells through that health-coverage program for primarily poor people, because the company has classified the device as a generic product.

But CMS said Wednesday that Mylan should be paying, but isn't, a rebate rate of 23.1 percent for brand-name drugs, as well as an inflation rebate that is legally required when drugmakers raise the prices of brand-name drugs above the inflation rate....