The director of the board that regulates pharmacies in Massachusetts has been fired for ignoring a complaint about the company implicated in the continuing fungal meningitis outbreak.
James Coffey, director of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, took no action when Colorado health officials complained that the New England Compounding Center (NECC) was acting like a drug manufacturer, according to Lauren Smith, MD, the interim commissioner of the Massachusetts health department.
Coffey has been dismissed and a pharmacy board attorney, Susan Manning, has been placed on administrative leave, Smith said in a statement Wednesday.
"It is incomprehensible that Mr. Coffey and Ms. Manning did not act on the Colorado complaint given NECC's past, and their responsibility to investigate complaints," Smith said.
Coffey had the authority and responsibility to order an investigation and did not, she said.
The Framingham, Mass., company made the injectable steroid -- preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate -- that is blamed for 424 infections and 31 deaths in 19 states.
It was licensed in Massachusetts as a compounding pharmacy and allowed to make drugs on a patient-specific basis after receiving a valid prescription. Instead, the Colorado health department said in July 2012, it was distributing drugs to hospitals there without having prescriptions in advance.
09/11/2012 : By Michael Smith / MedPage Today.
0 comments:
Post a Comment