Charlotte, N.C.-based hospital policy group Premier wrote a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration asking the agency to reconsider its opioid production regulations during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg Law.
Premier's letter, sent July 22, said hospitals are running out of intravenous painkillers, a problem due partly to the DEA's opioid production regulations imposed in recent years to address the opioid crisis. The DEA allowed drugmakers to produce 15 percent more opioids this year because of pandemic-induced shortages, but the agency still conflates commonly misused tablets with the IV version that hospitals need to sedate patients before surgery and help ventilate COVID-19 patients.
"Absent adequate supply of injectable opioids, patient care is threatened by canceling or delaying surgical procedures and increasing the risk of medication errors," Premier wrote. "In the case of COVID-19, shortages of these drugs may inhibit a patient from being ventilated."
Premier suggested that the DEA begin tracking IV opioids separately when regulating its annual production quotas.