Wedgewood Pharmacy recently surveyed its veterinary prescribers and practices to educate ourselves and the Senate HELP Committee about the potential impact of legislative proposition S.959. Reflecting the importance of any possible threat to access to compounded medications, we received more than 1,000 responses. Thank you to everyone that participated.
HIGHLIGHTS
98.4% of our survey respondents say that they always know when they are administering, dispensing or prescribing a compounded medication.
Access to compounded medications for office use is important.
Our survey respondents report overwhelmingly that it is very important (79.7%) or important (15.9%) to their patient’s health to maintain office stock of compounded medications. Further, you and your colleagues say that not having the ability to order compounds for office use would have a large negative impact (80%) or some negative impact (16.1%) on patients’ health and medical outcomes.62.7% say that there would be a large negative impact if only patient-specific prescribing were allowed, and 25.3% say that the impact would be “somewhat” negative.
Restricting use of bulk pharmaceutical ingredients in compounded medications would have a negative impact.
You and your colleagues say that it would have a large negative impact (77.8%) or some negative impact (18.6%) on how you prescribe and/or patient outcomes if legislation included limits on the active pharmaceutical ingredients that may be used in compounding. You and your colleagues say that allowing federal officials the authority to restrict or eliminate compounding any variation of a marketed drug (including changing the dose or dosage form) would have a large negative impact (90.4%) or some negative impact (7.8%).
The impact of more FDA oversight of compounding would be negative.
You and your colleagues say overwhelmingly that granting FDA oversight over animal-health compounding would reduce availability, increase cost, have a negative impact on patients, reduce patient compliance, increase your administrative burden and change how you practice medicine.