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Catania Presents Health Care Reports At First Council Session |
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Health Committee Chair Briefs Council on Pharmaceutical Marketing Expenditures and Adverse Medical Events in the District
Washington, D.C. – Today, Councilmember David Catania (At-Large) presented two recent healthcare reports at the D.C. Council’s first legislative meeting of 2009. The reports covered the topics of pharmaceutical marketing expenditures and adverse medical events at District healthcare facilities. Both reports were required by legislation authored by Catania and previously passed by the full Council.
“In my role as Chair of the Health Committee, I think it is important to update the Council on issues that were previously before us,” said Catania. “Access to prescription drugs and patient safety are two very important healthcare issues. I look forward to continuing to work on them in the new Council session.”
Title III of the “AccessRx Act of 2004” requires pharmaceutical manufacturers and labelers to report their marketing expenditures in the District to the Department of Health (DOH) annually. For the past two years, DOH has produced an annual report summarizing these expenditures. The most recent report shows that pharmaceutical companies reported spending $158.2 million to market prescription drugs in the District in 2007. That is more than the entire budget of the D.C. Healthcare Alliance, which provides full medical coverage to over 50,000 District residents. And it does not include expenditures that are regional in nature, including television and print advertising. The full report, including a breakdown of marketing expenditures by type, will be released by DOH in the coming weeks.
The Medical Malpractice Amendment Act of 2006 requires healthcare facilities in the District to report adverse medical events to DOH annually. DOH is then responsible for analyzing these data in order to identify patterns or trends and reporting to the results to the Council. The purpose of this reporting system is to improve patient safety by identifying systematic problems and sharing best practices among the District’s many healthcare providers. Data submitted to DOH show that there were 529 adverse events reported between July 2007 and July 2008. The full report, “Adverse Events in the District of Columbia,” can be found at http://www.davidcatania.com.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 January 2009 )
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