MA state health officials fired Jim Coffey, state pharmacy board chairman, and suspended board attorney Susan Manning in the wake of the New England Compounding Center scandal. Not only have more than 400 people been sickened with over 30 deaths, but apparently these too ignored a complaint in July from the State of Colorado over NECC activities.
Pharmacy Board Chair Fired Over Compounding Flub // Pharmalot.
Not only didn't the Pharmacy Board fail to investigate but they failed to pass on existence of the complaint to their bosses at the Department of Health. OOPS! It's one thing to kill people -- it's even worse when you make your bosses look bad and catch them off guard. Predictably under those circumstance, heads will roll.
The NECC was clearly acting as a small drug company and it deserves all the negative attention it is getting. Equally clear, if the Pharmacy Board didn't do its job in regulating/investigating their activites, then the firings and suspensions are merited and well earned.
As seen in the previous post, it is time to make sure we all know who is regulating this type of activity and make sure that it is crystal clear who has enforcement power and the responsibility to use it. It now appears that it will explicitly end up with the FDA.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Nov 8th 2012.
More on this from the BioProcess blog
http://www.bioprocessblog.com/archives/475
Posted by: bruce lehr | 11/12/2012 at 09:44 AM