While still half asleep this morning, reading the New York Times, I saw something so disturbing that I almost choked on my Pop Tart. In an
editorial about a bill that has passed the US House of Representatives, I read the following:
[The 21st Century Cures Act] would expedite the use of new antibiotics by providing financial incentives to hospitals to use them — benefiting manufacturers but also driving up costs and encouraging overuse, potentially breeding resistant superbugs.
It's hard to imagine that in the face of the alarming issues we are having with antibiotic resistance, and all the efforts hospitals across the country are expending to promote antimicrobial stewardship, that our government is entertaining paying hospitals to increase the use of new antibiotics. If this bill becomes law with this provision, antimicrobial stewardship is dead. What could possibly be next?
Mike -- the provision under subtitle G of the 21st Century cures act create an LPAD Pathway for development of new antimicrobials, puts new monitoring provisions in place for antimicrobial resistance and and creates a payment mechanisms that is designed to address the shortage of advanced antimicrobial drugs that are required to fight infections that are resistant and unresponsive to normal medicines. This is essentially a supplemental payment to the hospitals for the use of certain advanced antimicrobial drugs created under the LPAD pathway. These are items that have been supported by IDSA, SHEA and APIC.
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