WASHINGTON - It can be very disconcerting when a patient with a disease like cancer goes in for a drug treatment and discovers that the drug their doctor has prescribed for them is unavailable. Yet, during the past few years, that has been a serious and continuing problem for hospitals and other health care providers across the country.
Some of the shortages have occurred because of manufacturing issues such as quality-control problems, detected by increased inspections and regulations.
But over the past year, congressional investigators looking into why such shortages are occurring say they have found another possible reason: fake pharmacies.
Jay Cuetera, has Stage Four cancer. Last summer, as he was about to receive chemotherapy, he was suddenly informed the drug he needed wasn't available.
"When my nurse told me that the drug wasn't available, that I wouldn't be able to do my chemo that day, I was literally shocked," Cuetera said. "How could this be happening in the United States of America?"
Around the same time, records show that a pharmacy in this building in North Carolina, LTC pharmacy was buying the same drug - fluorouracil - supposedly to fill prescriptions. But when North Carolina regulators did an inspection, they found only this: no records, no equipment.
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