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2024-03-29T15:59:12Z
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QD Syringe Systems Readying Launch of Newly Designed Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2018-03-24:4605644:BlogPost:25008
2018-03-24T20:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p class="article-date"><a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720509?profile=original" width="591"></img></a></p>
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<p class="article-date"><span>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (PRWEB)</span> <span>March 20, 2018</span></p>
<p class="responsiveNews"><a href="http://www.qdsyringesystems.com" rel="nofollow" title="QD Syringe Systems, LLC.">QD Syringe Systems, LLC.</a> is readying to launch a redesigned fully functional basic syringe, the Quick Draw Syringe. The…</p>
<p class="article-date"><a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720509?profile=original" class="align-full" width="591"/></a></p>
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<p class="article-date"><span>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (PRWEB)</span> <span>March 20, 2018</span></p>
<p class="responsiveNews"><a href="http://www.qdsyringesystems.com" title="QD Syringe Systems, LLC." rel="nofollow">QD Syringe Systems, LLC.</a> is readying to launch a redesigned fully functional basic syringe, the Quick Draw Syringe. The <a href="http://qdsyringesystems.com/photo/qd-syringes-are-superior-to-all-detachable-draw-needles?context=featured" title="Quick Draw Syringe" rel="nofollow">Quick Draw Syringe</a> (or QD Syringe) is a groundbreaking medical product that is the next generation of low dead space disposable syringes. This eco-friendly syringe is an easier, safer alternative for medical professionals to use than the outdated and sometimes hazardous and wasteful syringes currently available. QD Syringe is simple – open the package and it’s fully functional.</p>
<p class="responsiveNews">“There are billions of detachable steel draw needles floating around hospitals. Detachable steel draw needles are dangerous, wasteful and a high liability risk product. QD Syringe is the next generation solution of safer and more effective syringes because it’s fully functional and eliminates all draw needles,” says Christopher Green, CEO and co-founder of QD Syringe Systems.</p>
<p class="responsiveNews">QD Syringe Systems has now created a <a href="http://qdsyringesystems.com/photo/qd-syringe-the-redesigned-low-waste-syringe-bpa-free-syringe?context=featured" title="BPA-free" rel="nofollow">BPA-free</a> acrylic dual channel draw down tip. This innovative design allows the medication to be completely drawn out of the vial. This design is especially vital since BPA, a chemical used in many plastics, has been shown to cause adverse health effects.</p>
<p class="responsiveNews">Nationwide, basic syringes haven’t had a design change in decades and while they work, they aren’t as effective as they could be. The basic Luer Lock syringe is essentially dependent on two needles with hubs, one to draw the medication into its chamber and the second to deliver the medication to its intended target. Current basic syringes waste costly medications, often leaving up to 84 microliters of residual medication volume in the syringe tip and hub after patient delivery, up to 42 microliters in its draw needle and up to 42 microliters left in the vial. This means up to 168 microliters of expensive medication is wasted. With the <a href="http://qdsyringe.com/" title="Glyflo Technology" rel="nofollow">Glyflo Technology™</a>, the QD syringe has a uniquely patented cone-shaped tip with channels which allows the QD Syringe to extract all of the medication necessary from rubber stopper vials and to deliver that costly medicine to patients effectively. In comparison to current syringes, we are in confident that the Glyflo Technology™ will be able to reduce the dead space below 35 microliters. This significantly reduces wasted vial and draw needle medication, saving millions of dollars annually.</p>
<p class="responsiveNews">Green adds, “Our team has also created the Quick Draw Low Dead Space Blunt Plastic Cannula. This GlyFlo Technology™ allows for the universal connection to all syringes with a slip-tip or Luer Lock. This ensures that all vial medications, including thick medications, can be drawn down efficiently and successfully administered to patients. This method prevents waste of medications and is safer for the patient as well as medical personnel.”</p>
<p class="responsiveNews">Because of the high dead space in current basic syringes, blood can linger on the tip and inside of its hub which has been shown to encapsulate dangerous pathogens for up to six weeks. However, the QD Syringe has a blunt tip with bilateral drying channels (like an inside out needle), causing blood not to pool which makes it much safer for medical experts and reduces the spread of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkNHANkmOGM" title="infectious diseases" rel="nofollow">infectious diseases</a>.</p>
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<p class="responsiveNews">About QD Syringe Systems, Inc. <br/> © 2021 QD Syringes Systems - The QD Syringe is a patented product registered with the U.S. Patent Office. Headquartered in Cooper City, Florida, QD Syringe Systems, Inc. was established to create, manufacture and distribute innovative disposable syringes and accessories.</p>
<p class="responsiveNews"><a href="http://www.QuickDrawSyringe.com" rel="nofollow">[http://www.QuickDrawSyringe.com</a> <br/> <a href="https://twitter.com/QDSyringe" rel="nofollow">[https://twitter.com/QDSyringe</a> <br/> <a href="http://QDSyringe.com" rel="nofollow">http://QDSyringe.com</a></p>
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<p class="responsiveNews">© 2018 QD Syringes Systems ~ The QD Syringe is a patented product registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The QD Blunt Cannula is in patent pending status.</p>
QD Syringe Systems Creates the First Patient Only Dedicated Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2017-04-18:4605644:BlogPost:22913
2017-04-18T23:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720372?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720372?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> One of the many reasons the QD Syringe was created was to combat the ever increasing dangers of deadly misconnections with the basic luer lock syringes (ISO-80369). The QD Syringe Systems team is creating a QD color matching syringe and color matching neutral displacement needleless connector. This patient dedicated unit will contain proprietary tactile finger touch…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720372?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720372?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-left" width="750"/></a>One of the many reasons the QD Syringe was created was to combat the ever increasing dangers of deadly misconnections with the basic luer lock syringes (ISO-80369). The QD Syringe Systems team is creating a QD color matching syringe and color matching neutral displacement needleless connector. This patient dedicated unit will contain proprietary tactile finger touch patterning that will insure the nurse can recognize the devices and their compatibility even in complete darkness.</p>
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<p>Christopher Green, RN Inventor</p>
<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">www.QDSyringe.com</a></p>
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New Disposable Syringe Eliminates Dead Space
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2017-04-06:4605644:BlogPost:22805
2017-04-06T02:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p>By HospiMedica International staff writers<br></br> Posted on 05 Apr 2017<br></br> <br></br> A new disposable syringe with an integrated cone-shaped tip can completely extract costly medicines from rubber stopper vials and deliver them to patients effectively.<br></br> <br></br> The QD Syringe Systems Quick Draw (QD) Syringe is a based on a solid polycarbonate dual-channel, draw-down tip which completely draws all medication out of a vial. An extended rubber nipple tip eliminates the dead space within the…</p>
<p>By HospiMedica International staff writers<br/> Posted on 05 Apr 2017<br/> <br/> A new disposable syringe with an integrated cone-shaped tip can completely extract costly medicines from rubber stopper vials and deliver them to patients effectively.<br/> <br/> The QD Syringe Systems Quick Draw (QD) Syringe is a based on a solid polycarbonate dual-channel, draw-down tip which completely draws all medication out of a vial. An extended rubber nipple tip eliminates the dead space within the syringe, along with the proprietary GlyFlo Tip that reduces the dead space to only 18 microliters. Once medication is drawn into the QD Syringe, a custom hub with a sharp steel needle is placed over the draw tip, ensuring the sharpest needle possible when giving a patient an injection.<br/> <br/> <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720176?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720176?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-full" width="750"/></a><br/> <br/> Because of the high dead space in current basic syringes, blood can linger on the tip and inside the hub, potentially encapsulating dangerous living pathogens for many weeks. However, the QD Syringe has a blunt tip with bilateral drying channels, which causes blood not to pool in the hub, reducing the spread of infectious diseases and protecting medical staff. In addition, the Quick Draw Syringe is made of a Bisphenol A (BPA)-free polypropylene body and a strong BPA-free acrylic tip, which increases patient safety.<br/> <br/> “With so many changes in technology, we decided that there was a great need for not just a new disposable syringe but one that vastly improved the function, safety and efficiency of it. And with the rising costs of healthcare, there was also a need for a basic syringe that was cost-effective,” said Christopher Green, CEO and co-founder of QD Syringe Systems. “The QD Syringe simplifies the process of withdrawing medication from a rubber stopper vial and injecting it into a patient, or within seconds deliver medication into a patient’s luer access split septum.”<br/> <br/> The basic Luer Lock syringe is dependent on two needles with hubs, one to draw the medication into its chamber and the second to deliver the medication to its intended patient. Current basic syringes waste up to 42 microliters in each separate draw needle, and up to 42 microliters are left in the vial. Often, up to another 84 microliters of residual medication are left in the syringe tip and hub after patient delivery, which that potentially up to 168 microliters of expensive medication is wasted.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" target="_blank">http://www.qdsyringe.com</a></p>
The QD Syringe is a BPA Free Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2017-03-25:4605644:BlogPost:22904
2017-03-25T13:17:14.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
The QD Syringe is molded with a BPA free polypropylene body and a strong BPA free acrylic tip. Our QD Syringe is molded as a BPA free medical device.<br />
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"Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic synthetic compound with the chemical formula (CH3)2C(C6H4OH)2 belonging to the group of diphenylmethane derivatives and bisphenols, with two hydroxyphenyl groups. It is a colorless solid that is soluble in organic solvents, but poorly soluble in water. It has been in commercial use since 1957."<br />
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QD Syringe is a…
The QD Syringe is molded with a BPA free polypropylene body and a strong BPA free acrylic tip. Our QD Syringe is molded as a BPA free medical device.<br />
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"Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic synthetic compound with the chemical formula (CH3)2C(C6H4OH)2 belonging to the group of diphenylmethane derivatives and bisphenols, with two hydroxyphenyl groups. It is a colorless solid that is soluble in organic solvents, but poorly soluble in water. It has been in commercial use since 1957."<br />
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QD Syringe is a BPA free syringe. We are committed to patient safety.<br />
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<a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br />
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Christopher Green Inventor & ICU R.N. - Medical Syringe Products.
The QD Syringe Reconstructs The Standard Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-11-21:4605644:BlogPost:22589
2016-11-21T15:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720004?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720004?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="690"></img></a></p>
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<p><strong>Basic Syringe Definition:</strong></p>
<p><br></br> <em>"A syringe is a simple piston pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube (the barrel), allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube. The open end of the…</em></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720004?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="690" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720004?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-left" width="690"/></a></p>
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<p><strong>Basic Syringe Definition:</strong></p>
<p><br/> <em>"A syringe is a simple piston pump consisting of a plunger that fits tightly in a tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed along inside a cylindrical tube (the barrel), allowing the syringe to take in and expel a liquid or gas through an orifice at the open end of the tube. The open end of the syringe may be fitted with a hypodermic needle, a nozzle, or tubing to help direct the flow into and out of the barrel. Syringes are often used to administer injections, apply compounds such as glue or lubricant, and measure liquids." - Wikipedia</em><br/> <br/> <strong>The problem:</strong><br/> <br/> The basic syringe design has not changed in over 60 years.<br/> <br/> The problem with the common "basic syringe" is that its main function (other than the plunger drawing fluid in or pushing fluid out of the syringe cylinder) is to allow other products to thread on to its syringe cylinder for any functionality to take place. This 1950's basic syringe is merely a potential cylinder to hold and deliver fluid and its distal tubular hollow projection (tip) that we know today acts only as a receiver of external luer products which then allows functionality to take place. This 1950's basic syringe that we still use today is completely dependent on an external product to complete a given task. This basic syringe needs to mate with an adapter such as a hub with a threaded blunt or steel needle to mate with to accomplish its cylinder filling, expelling potential or any given task. The basic syringe that we know today has no other claimed functionality except for its plunger located inside its cylinder which pulls or pushes fluid in or out of its distal tip.<br/> <br/> <strong>The solution:</strong><br/> <br/> The <a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" target="_blank">QD Syringe</a> reconstructs the basic stand alone syringe and actually gives it true functionality. The QD Syringe redesigned the basic syringe by elongating the inner lumen creating an integrated polycarbonate draw tip and plunger with a extended nipple tip to eliminate the void space inside the distal end of the syringe. After drawing down the medication from a vial, the redesigned hub wraps around the draw tip in a low dead space relationship and a less painful injection is given. By using the new functional <a href="http://www.qdsyringesystems.com" target="_blank">QD syringe</a> medical personnel will be safer at work (no need for detachable sharp draw needles), purchasing departments will enjoy a substantial reduction in operating cost, decrease risk (no detachable draw needles and eliminating the risk of patients receiving draw needle injections). And the QD Syringe with its low dead space design reduces medication waste to just 18 microliters per injection (standard syringes have up to 90 microliters of wasted dead space. The QD Syringe has just 18 microliters of residual volume per injection).</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338953384?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="690" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338953384?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-left" width="690"/></a><br/></p>
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<p>For Licensing information contact:</p>
<p>Christopher Green at Chris@QDSS.us</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">www.QDSyringe.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a></p>
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Syringes are a Surprising Source of Wasted Medication
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-11-14:4605644:BlogPost:22576
2016-11-14T15:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348719809?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348719809?profile=original" width="651"></img></a></p>
<p><strong>Syringes are a surprising source of wasted medication</strong></p>
<p><br></br> Better syringe design can save thousands of dollars per year</p>
<p><br></br> (Chapel Hill, N.C., June 6) – When medicine is injected, a little bit of it stays behind in the syringe. It’s not much, but depending on syringe design and the cost of the drug, this waste — or dead space — can…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348719809?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348719809?profile=original" class="align-left" width="651"/></a></p>
<p><strong>Syringes are a surprising source of wasted medication</strong></p>
<p><br/> Better syringe design can save thousands of dollars per year</p>
<p><br/> (Chapel Hill, N.C., June 6) – When medicine is injected, a little bit of it stays behind in the syringe. It’s not much, but depending on syringe design and the cost of the drug, this waste — or dead space — can add up to as much as $2,300 per year for a patient, according to a new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and RTI International.<br/> <br/> Syringe dead space is the leftover fluid that remains inside the syringe after the plunger is fully depressed. In syringes with a lot of dead space, the leftover amount averages to three percent of the volume of the medication dose. In syringes with a low-dead-space design, the volume of leftover medication averages 10 times less at 0.3 percent.<br/> <br/> “It is a difference of fractions of a milliliter, but when some of these medications cost more than $20,000 a month, it adds up,” said Christine Oramasionwu, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the nation’s No. 1 ranked UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “Low-dead-space design, like those with an integrated needle or a cone-shaped plunger, should be adopted as the industry standard for all syringes in order to reduce preventable and expensive medication waste.”<br/> <br/> UNC-Chapel Hill and RTI researchers, whose work is reported in the June 6 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, identified 17 medications administered using high-dead-space syringes and seven using low-dead-space syringes. The total volume of the injection ranged from one-fourth to five milliliters for high-dead-space medications and 0.08 to one milliliters for low-dead-space medications. The median cost for a month’s supply of medication packaged in high-dead-space syringes was $4,443 and $3,412 for low-dead-space syringes.<br/> <br/> The median value of the wasted medicine per dose was $5 for high-dead-space medications and about fifty cents for low-dead-space medications. Over one year, the cost of the waste for high-dead-space medications ranged from $558 to $2,329 (a median value of $1,638) compared to $68 to $205 (a median value of $125) for low-dead-space medications.<br/> <br/> The researchers reported the median, or middle value, of most monetary ranges because of the high variability of cost among the relatively small number of medications included in the study. The high and low price for a 30-day supply of the 17 high-dead-space medications was $50 and $20,552. The high and low price for a 30-day supply of the seven low-dead-space medications was $716 and $29,728.<br/> <br/> ____</p>
<p><br/> About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill<br/> <br/> The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 77 bachelor’s, 113 master’s, 68 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools and the College of Arts and Sciences. Every day, faculty – including two Nobel laureates – staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s more than 308,000 alumni live in all 50 states and 150 countries. More than 167,000 live in North Carolina.<br/> <br/> UNC Communications and Public Affairs contact: Thania Benios, (919) 962-8596, thania_beniois@unc.edu<br/> <br/> UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy contact: David Etchison, (919) 966-7744, david_etchison@unc.edu</p>
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<p><a href="http://qdsyringe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/QD-Syringe-Low-Dead-Space-Syringe-for-Greater-Dose-Control.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-3601"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-3601" src="http://qdsyringe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/QD-Syringe-Low-Dead-Space-Syringe-for-Greater-Dose-Control.jpg" alt="qd-syringe-low-dead-space-syringe-for-greater-dose-control" width="723" height="501"/></a></p>
<p>Websites:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com" target="_blank">www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com" target="_blank">www.QDSyringe.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.Syringes.co" target="_blank">www.Syringes.co</a></p>
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QD Syringe | The Low Dead Space QD Syringe and QD Needle Hub System
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-10-29:4605644:BlogPost:22374
2016-10-29T16:42:27.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952257?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952257?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> QD Syringes are the next generation of basic disposable plastic syringes with detachable injection hubs with needles. The QD Syringe does not need a detachable draw needle to draw fluid inside of its barrel. The QD Syringe has an integrated poly-carbonate tip with Gly Flo Technology to accomplish this task. The QD Syringe is a low dead space syringe and has the sharpest…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952257?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952257?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-left" width="750"/></a>QD Syringes are the next generation of basic disposable plastic syringes with detachable injection hubs with needles. The QD Syringe does not need a detachable draw needle to draw fluid inside of its barrel. The QD Syringe has an integrated poly-carbonate tip with Gly Flo Technology to accomplish this task. The QD Syringe is a low dead space syringe and has the sharpest needles of any injection syringe available.<br/> <br/> The QD Syringe works by being functional right out of it’s package. It is the only syringe that is able to draw fluid into itself. Then the appropriate steel needle gauge and length is attached over it’s tip and a virtually painless injection is given.<br/> <br/> The painless injection is accomplished by not using the sharp steel needle to draw up medications and dulling its tip prior to giving the patient injection. The QD Syringe gives iv push injections and is also compatible with a majority of pre-slit injection receptacles such as the BD Q-Syte. All of this is accomplished by the low dead space QD Syringe.<br/> <br/> <a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br/> <br/> <a href="http://www.Syringes.co">http://www.Syringes.co</a><br/> <br/> http:<a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a><br/> <br/> ---</p>
Low Dead Space Syringe | Low Residual Volume Syringe | QD Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-10-06:4605644:BlogPost:22342
2016-10-06T13:21:10.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348726003?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348726003?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> -----</p>
<p>The QD Syringe has been touted as the next generation of safer and more effective syringes to enter the market - the Quick Draw Syringe™. The Quick Draw Syringe or the QD Syringe is a revolutionary product that will be the world’s first fully functional basic low dead space syringe with detachable and low residual volume QD hubs with needles.<br></br><br></br>Created by…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348726003?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348726003?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-full" width="750"/></a>-----</p>
<p>The QD Syringe has been touted as the next generation of safer and more effective syringes to enter the market - the Quick Draw Syringe™. The Quick Draw Syringe or the QD Syringe is a revolutionary product that will be the world’s first fully functional basic low dead space syringe with detachable and low residual volume QD hubs with needles.<br/><br/>Created by Christopher Green, CEO and co-founder of QD Syringe Systems Inc., this patented eco-friendly product is unique in the fact that it is fully functional out of its package, it is safer and easier for medical professionals to use and a low dead space syringe that tremendously reduces medication waste and residual volume. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, QD Syringe Systems, Inc. CEO says the design of basic syringe hasn’t been updated in decades. Until now. Introducing the QD Syringe.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a></p>
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QD Syringe Sytems® | QD Syringe | Low Dead Space Syringes
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-10-06:4605644:BlogPost:22538
2016-10-06T13:17:18.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3323501044?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3323501044?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p>A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile low dead space syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo Technology™ designed as a ready to use draw down needle, eliminating time, needle…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3323501044?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3323501044?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-full" width="750"/></a></p>
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<p>A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile low dead space syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo Technology™ designed as a ready to use draw down needle, eliminating time, needle dulling, hazardous waste and additional inventory ~ Unique bilateral fluid flow channels for easy draw and delivery of viscous liquids ~The QD Syringe is compatible with existing Luer Lock Hubs ~ The QD Syringe has a low dead space mating needle Hub available for up to 20 needle gauge sizes.<br/><br/>For More information contact: Christopher Green and Nicholas J. Sears, M.D., FACS at: Chris@qdss.us<br/><br/><br/>Websites:<br/><br/><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a><br/><br/>_____</p>
QD Syringe | Low Dead Space Syringe | Low Dead Space Needle Hubs
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-10-06:4605644:BlogPost:22536
2016-10-06T13:14:24.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720901?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720901?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile low dead space syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo Technology™ designed as a ready to use draw down needle, eliminating time, needle dulling, hazardous…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720901?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348720901?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-full" width="750"/></a>A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile low dead space syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo Technology™ designed as a ready to use draw down needle, eliminating time, needle dulling, hazardous waste and additional inventory ~ Unique bilateral fluid flow channels for easy draw and delivery of viscous liquids ~The QD Syringe is compatible with existing Luer Lock Hubs ~ The QD Syringe has a low dead space mating needle Hub available for up to 20 needle gauge sizes.<br/><br/>For More information contact: Christopher Green and Nicholas J. Sears, M.D., FACS at: Chris@qdss.us<br/><br/><br/>Websites:<br/><br/><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a><br/><br/>_____<br/><br/></p>
QD Syringe | QD Syringe Systems | Low Dead Space Syringe
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-10-04:4605644:BlogPost:22336
2016-10-04T16:04:47.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952710?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p>A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo™ Technology designed as a ready to use draw down needle,…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.qdsyringe.com" target="_blank"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338952710?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-left" width="750"/></a></p>
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<p>A New Syringe Designed for greater Dose Control ~ The patented design of the QD Syringe includes several innovative concepts that also help make it one of the most versatile syringe products available. The QD Syringe consists of a patented cone tip with GlyFlo™ Technology designed as a ready to use draw down needle, eliminating time, needle dulling, hazardous waste and additional inventory ~ Unique bilateral fluid flow channels for easy draw and delivery of viscous liquids ~The QD Syringe is compatible with existing Luer Lock Hubs ~ The QD Syringe has a low dead space mating needle Hub available for up to 20 needle gauge sizes. <br/><br/>For More information contact: Christopher Green and Nicholas J. Sears, M.D., FACS at:QuickDrawSyringe@gmail.com</p>
<p><br/>Websites:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.QDSyringe.com">http://www.QDSyringe.com</a><br/><a href="http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com">http://www.QDSyringeSystems.com</a></p>
Is There a Definite Pre-Filled Syringe Solution? Maybe not.
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-09-22:4605644:BlogPost:17512
2016-09-22T13:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338950943?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="189" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338950943?profile=original" width="292"></img></a> This image shows what a sharp needle looks like after it is used just once then after being used six times. The BEST practice is to only use the sharp sterile steel needle ONE TIME (as intended by it's manufacturers)...and that is when it is entering a PATIENT. That will ensure that the patient is being injected with the sharpest, most painless, sterile needle possible. It…</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338950943?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338950943?profile=original" width="292" height="189"/></a>This image shows what a sharp needle looks like after it is used just once then after being used six times. The BEST practice is to only use the sharp sterile steel needle ONE TIME (as intended by it's manufacturers)...and that is when it is entering a PATIENT. That will ensure that the patient is being injected with the sharpest, most painless, sterile needle possible. It just makes perfect sense to deliver medication this way. </p>
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<p>Why should a sterile, perfectly sharp steel needle (which should be for patient use only, FIRST TIME) have to help draw medications into a syringe, work to reconstitute medications, enter into multiple vials to draw medication into a basic syringe ALL before ultimately using that same now DULL needle to enter into a patient? This can cause unnecessary pain on needle insertion, contamination and medication waste. The hypodermic sharp steel needle was created with precision and extreme sharpness to ease pain of insertion and intended for patient insertion only. The SHARP steel needle was created to enter a patients body the FIRST time reducing unnecessary pain. WHY inject a rough used needle into sensitive skin? WHY introduce the possibility for contamination and foreign material into the body.</p>
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<p>The above two paragraphs might seem a little redundant but this fact needs to be driven into the minds of medical personnel and patients as it has been overlooked or ignored for over 60 years.</p>
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<p>The basic polypropylene syringe is dependent on another product to be functional. The basic polypropylene syringe is barbaric and behind the times. We must find solutions for better patient care.</p>
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<p>One such solutions seems to be the pre-filled syringe. Lets take a closer look.</p>
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<p>There is a lot of discussion regarding Pre-Filled Syringes along with millions of dollars in marketing. Although with some emergency medications the pre-filled syringe is a great option but when delivering general mass use medication and medications that are delicately measured by a weight based protocol, the pre-filled syringe is a wasteful alternative to its consumer. The pharmaceutical companies will not tell you how much waste is being encountered by nurses wasting portions of pre-filled medications in the sinks of the med rooms on their units.</p>
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<p>When using a medication vial the nurse can access just the right amount ordered by the doctor and keep the remaining amount needed for the next ordered dose property labeled in its vial. This is an extreme cost saving for the hospital purchasing departments. The pre-filled syringe has its place for sure but you will NEVER see the statistics of how much waste is taking place by nurses discarding the pre-filled syringes medication to get to the ordered dose by the doctor for injection.</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348721040?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348721040?profile=original" width="340" height="252"/></a></p>
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<p>Some nurses have solved this problem by not wanting to waste the medication inside the pre-filled syringe. What they do is open a basic 1cc syringe (3cc, 6cc, etc.) from its package, then transfer/empty ALL of the pre-filled syringe medication into the abutting 1cc syringe then just throw the pre-filled syringe away. The nurse then labels the basic 1, 3, 6cc syringe with the medication now inside the new syringe. Then the nurse can deliver to the patient the correct dose ordered by the MD.</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348721191?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348721191?profile=original" width="343" height="226"/></a></p>
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<p>The overall concept of the pre-filled syringe is great, the only thing is that many nurses use that pre-filled syringe a just a BASIC ORDINARY VIAL.</p>
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<p>There is a place for the Pre-filled syringe, we just need to pause for a moment and slow down the billion dollar pharmaceutical wave of excitement for all of its intended uses.</p>
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<p>Expensive "patented" medications can be packaged in their own "patented" pre-filled syringe device. But when packaging general mass use medications with pre-filled syringes, the cost just doesn't justify their use.</p>
Dangerous Pre-Filled Syringe ~ Is It Time To Pause And Reflect?
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-09-21:4605644:BlogPost:17408
2016-09-21T12:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<div id="articleContent"><h3 class="sectionTitle"><span style="color: #000000;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723109?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="78" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723109?profile=original" width="78"></img></a> Pre-Filled Syringe Safety Concerns</span></h3>
<p>ISMP can envision other problems not mentioned in response to the survey when using prefilled cartridges as vials. Nurses may want to dilute small volumes of IV push medications to aid slow administration, or they may want to dilute doses of IV…</p>
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<div id="articleContent"><h3 class="sectionTitle"><span style="color: #000000;"><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723109?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723109?profile=original" width="78" height="78"/></a>Pre-Filled Syringe Safety Concerns</span></h3>
<p>ISMP can envision other problems not mentioned in response to the survey when using prefilled cartridges as vials. Nurses may want to dilute small volumes of IV push medications to aid slow administration, or they may want to dilute doses of IV analgesics to speed initial delivery to the patient (rather than remaining in the IV tubing longer than necessary). It is not necessarily the dilution of these medications that is concerning, although in many cases, the dilution is unnecessary given the very few Carpuject medications that actually require dilution according to the manufacturer's labeling (e.g., LORazepam). Rather, the concern lies with the means of diluting them by using a syringe cartridge as a <strong>single- or multiple-dose vial</strong>. Under these conditions, diluting medications unnecessarily poses a risk that exceeds the benefit, particularly given that the process occurs outside pharmacy-controlled admixture under USP.</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723198?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348723198?profile=original" width="70" height="117"/></a>Also, transfer of the Carpuject medication in its barcoded, labeled syringe to an unlabeled syringe reduces the effectiveness of a bedside barcode scanning system because the drug and diluent are not in their original, barcoded containers. The barcodes on the original containers might be scanned, but it does not verify that the products are in the syringe used for drug administration since the transfer process often does not occur at the bedside.</p>
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The Pre-Filled Syringe ~ A Dangerous Alternative?
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-08-21:4605644:BlogPost:17507
2016-08-21T12:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722701?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="99" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722701?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="104"></img></a> Nurses reported concerns associated with using the cartridges as vials. These nurses expressed concern about potential SAFETY ISSUES with this practice, including:</p>
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<li><p>Risk of contamination after entry into a medication cartridge not intended for puncture as a vial</p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of contamination when using single-use cartridges as multidose…</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722701?profile=original"><img width="230" class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722701?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="104" height="99"/></a>Nurses reported concerns associated with using the cartridges as vials. These nurses expressed concern about potential SAFETY ISSUES with this practice, including:</p>
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<li><p>Risk of contamination after entry into a medication cartridge not intended for puncture as a vial</p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of contamination when using single-use cartridges as multidose vials</p>
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<li><p>Risk of contamination when preparing sterile medications under conditions that might not meet standards in the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) Chapter <797></p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of unlabeled syringes once medications have been withdrawn from the labeled, prefilled cartridges into a new unlabeled syringe</p>
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<li><p>Risk of mislabeled syringes if a drug was withdrawn from a Carpuject cartridge into a prefilled, labeled syringe of diluent (e.g., drug added to a normal saline flush cartridge)</p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of dosing or measurement errors when transferring medication from one syringe to another</p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of staff needlestick injuries</p>
</li>
<li><p>Risk of conditions that may facilitate drug diversion of products documented as "wasted."</p>
</li>
</ul>
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<p>Nurses also shed light on some of the factors that encourage the practice of withdrawing medications from the cartridges:</p>
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<li>citing unavailability of syringe holders (or no awareness of their existence!),</li>
<li>the desire or need to dilute medications before administration,</li>
<li>and concerns about the transmission of infections from syringe holders that have not been properly cleaned.</li>
</ul>
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<p><em>~The survey was completed by <strong>540 nurses</strong>, predominantly staff-level registered nurses (78%) and, to a much lesser extent, nurse managers (8%) and nurse educators (8%). Most participating nurses (87%) worked in organizations that have been using Carpuject prefilled syringe cartridges for more than 2 years</em></p>
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<p><em><span class="font-size-1">Article Source: www .medscape.com</span></em></p>
FDA ::: Warns of IV Compatibility Issues for Prefilled Glass Syringes
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-08-21:4605644:BlogPost:17504
2016-08-21T04:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<div id="articleContent"><p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722295?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="211" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722295?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="370"></img></a> Compatibility issues have been reported between certain prefilled needleless glass syringes and pin-activated needleless intravenous (IV) access systems, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday.</p>
<p>Connection attempts may cause the pin to break, thus clogging the syringe or causing damage to the IV tubing and/or needleless…</p>
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<div id="articleContent"><p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722295?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722295?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="370" height="211"/></a>Compatibility issues have been reported between certain prefilled needleless glass syringes and pin-activated needleless intravenous (IV) access systems, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday.</p>
<p>Connection attempts may cause the pin to break, thus clogging the syringe or causing damage to the IV tubing and/or needleless connector that requires reestablishment of IV access.</p>
<p>The resulting delay in drug administration could cause serious harm to patients requiring urgent treatment, according to an alert sent from MedWatch, the FDA's safety information and adverse event reporting program.</p>
<p>Most of the reports have reflected issues with prefilled syringes containing adenosine, made by Teva (NDC 00703-8781-23), Sagent (NDC 25021-0301-72), Baxter (NDC 10019-0063-08 [07]), and Wockhardt (NDC 64679-0630-01 [02]); problems with amiodarone-filled syringes from Sagent/Gland have also been reported (NDC 25021-0302-73).</p>
<p>Healthcare professionals are advised to check for affected products and to consider stocking adenosine vials or prefilled plastic syringes as a back-up measure in crash carts, operating room pharmacies, and emergency drug boxes/caches.</p>
<div class="sponsoredInfo"><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://asimg.webmd.com/external/cleargif/1x1.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0"/></div>
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<p>"While FDA is concerned about this incompatibility, we are most concerned with situations in which a delay in delivery of the drug could potentially result in serious harm to patients," the agency noted in a news release.</p>
<p>As a result, the FDA has initiated a review of all currently marketed prefilled needleless glass syringes intended for use with needleless IV access systems for which delays in drug administration could cause life-threatening harm. The FDA is also working with manufacturers to correct the problem and identify additional mitigation strategies while reviewing the problem to determine the appropriate regulatory actions.</p>
<p>More information on the announcement is available on the FDA <a href="http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm234219.htm" target="_blank">Web site</a>.</p>
<p>Adverse events related to use of needleless prefilled glass syringes should be reported to the FDA's MedWatch reporting program by telephone at 1-800-FDA-1088, by fax at 1-800-FDA-0178, online at <a href="http://www.fda.gov/medwatch" target="_blank">http://www.fda.gov/medwatch</a>, or by mail to 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Maryland 20852-9787.</p>
<p>~ Above Photo From ---> <a href="http://www.medxl.com/home.html">http://www.medxl.com/home.html</a></p>
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Employer's Responsibility To Re-evaluate Engineering Controls, i.e., Safer Needle Devices, At Least Annually
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-06-21:4605644:BlogPost:8401
2016-06-21T10:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><span class="blueTen">January 20, 2004 <br></br> <br></br> Mr. Marty Salanger<br></br> Manager of Safety, Policy and Government Relations<br></br> BD Advanced Protection Technologies<br></br> 1 Becton Drive<br></br> Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 <br></br> <br></br> Dear Mr. Salanger: <br></br> <br></br> Thank you for your October 29, 2003 letter to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) Directorate of Enforcement Programs (DEP). This letter constitutes OSHA's interpretation only of the requirements discussed and…</span></p>
<p><span class="blueTen">January 20, 2004 <br/> <br/> Mr. Marty Salanger<br/> Manager of Safety, Policy and Government Relations<br/> BD Advanced Protection Technologies<br/> 1 Becton Drive<br/> Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 <br/> <br/> Dear Mr. Salanger: <br/> <br/> Thank you for your October 29, 2003 letter to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) Directorate of Enforcement Programs (DEP). This letter constitutes OSHA's interpretation only of the requirements discussed and may not be applicable to any question(s) not delineated within your original correspondence. You had specific questions regarding an employer's responsibility to re-evaluate engineering controls under OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard (29 CFR 1910.1030). Your question is restated below followed by OSHA's response. We apologize for the delay in responding. <br/> <br/> <i><b>Question:</b> If an employer has selected a particular safety-engineered device based on employee feedback, and a reduction in needlestick injuries can be shown as a result of the adoption of the current device, to what extent does an employer need to re-evaluate their chosen device?<span class="blueTen"><span class="blueTen"><span class="blueTen"><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original" width="194" height="278"/></a></span></span></span></i> <br/> <br/> <b>Reply:</b> As you are aware, OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard requires employers to review and update their Exposure Control Plan (ECP) at least annually [29 CFR 1910.1030(c)(1)(iv)]. It is also a requirement that: 1) annual reviews and updates of ECPs reflect changes in technology that</span> <span class="blueTen">eliminate or reduce exposure to bloodborne pathogens; and 2) employers document annually their consideration and implementation of appropriate commercially available and effective safer medical devices [29 CFR 1910.1030(c)(1)(iv)(A-B)]. <br/> <br/> If, after employee input, an employer selects an engineering control that is effective in reducing needlestick injuries, it is not necessary to evaluate all newly emerging engineering controls each year. The employer must simply keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and solicit input from non-managerial employees to determine if the facility's chosen device remains preferable to any newly developed products. This should be documented in the ECP. <br/> <br/> Since the requirements of the standard are performance-based, OSHA determines compliance with the standard on a facility-by-facility, instance-by-instance basis, based on the employer's consideration of safer medical devices, solicitation of input from employees, documentation in an employer's ECP, and employee interviews. <br/> <br/> Thank you for your interest in occupational safety and health. We hope you find this information helpful. OSHA requirements are set by statute, standards, and regulations. Our interpretation letters explain these requirements and how they apply to particular circumstances, but they cannot create additional employer obligations. This letter constitutes OSHA's interpretation of the requirements discussed. Note that our enforcement guidance may be affected by changes to OSHA rules. Also, from time to time we update our guidance in response to new information. To keep apprised of such developments, you can consult OSHA's website at</span> <a href="http://www.osha.gov/index.html"><span class="blueTen">http://www.osha.gov</span></a><span class="blueTen">. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact the Office of Health Enforcement at (202) 693-2190. <br/> <br/> Sincerely, <br/> <br/> Richard E. Fairfax, Director<br/> Directorate of Enforcement Programs</span></p>
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<p>~ <a href="http://www.Syringes.co" target="_blank">www.Syringes.co</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://qdsyringe.blogspot.com/2011/12/needlestick-injuries-legislation-and.html" target="_blank">~ Needlestick Injuries, Legislation and More...</a></p>
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Dangers of Prefilled Syringes
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-04-19:4605644:BlogPost:17402
2016-04-19T21:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722499?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="179" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722499?profile=original" width="241"></img></a> <strong>ISMP</strong> recently conducted a survey of our nursing audience on Carpuject prefilled syringe cartridges for injectable medications. The survey revealed two troubling safety issues that may place patients at risk:</p>
<ul>
<li>Many nurses were unaware of an important product safety issue with Carpuject cartridges that could lead to OVERDOSES with high-alert…</li>
</ul>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722499?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722499?profile=original" width="241" height="179"/></a><strong>ISMP</strong> recently conducted a survey of our nursing audience on Carpuject prefilled syringe cartridges for injectable medications. The survey revealed two troubling safety issues that may place patients at risk:</p>
<ul>
<li>Many nurses were unaware of an important product safety issue with Carpuject cartridges that could lead to OVERDOSES with high-alert medications.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Many nurses reported using Carpuject prefilled cartridges as SINGLE and MULTI-DOSE VIALS, withdrawing all or part of the medication in the cartridge into a syringe, often UNLABLED, before administration.</li>
</ul>
<p>FULL ARTICLE HERE ---> <a href="http://bit.ly/OWCbln">http://bit.ly/OWCbln</a></p>
SHARPS INJURY PREVENTION LIST and INFORMATION
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-03-27:4605644:BlogPost:9703
2016-03-27T13:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><span class="font-size-5"><strong>SHARPS INJURY PREVENTION LIST and INFORMATION</strong></span></p>
<p></p>
<p>In all workplaces where employees are exposed to contaminated needles or other contaminated sharps, the employer shall comply with 29CFR 1910.1030, Tennessee Code Annotated 50-3-203(e)(1)-(e)(4) and Tennessee Rule 0800-1-10 as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Evaluate available engineered sharps injury prevention devices for all sharps</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Solicit input from employees directly…</li>
</ul>
<p><span class="font-size-5"><strong>SHARPS INJURY PREVENTION LIST and INFORMATION</strong></span></p>
<p></p>
<p>In all workplaces where employees are exposed to contaminated needles or other contaminated sharps, the employer shall comply with 29CFR 1910.1030, Tennessee Code Annotated 50-3-203(e)(1)-(e)(4) and Tennessee Rule 0800-1-10 as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Evaluate available engineered sharps injury prevention devices for all sharps</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Solicit input from employees directly involved in patient care in the evaluation and selection of devices and document this in the Exposure Control Plan</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Select the devices most appropriate to your procedures</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Train employees to use the devices,</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Require use of the safer devices and use of safer work practices when handling and passing contaminated sharps</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Update the Exposure Control Plan at least annually or when needed to document the devices evaluated and those placed into use</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Justify the use of any sharps without sharps injury protection & document in the Exposure Control Plan</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Maintain a Sharps Injury Log with:</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: left;">Type and brand of device involved in the exposure incident</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Department or work area of occurrence</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">Explanation of how it occurred</li>
</ol>
<p><br/> The list below is to assist employers in complying with changes in Tennessee Code Annotated Section 50-3-203 (Senate Bill 1023/House Bill 634). Inclusion of types of devices does not represent or imply any evaluation, endorsement, or approval by The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Tennessee Department of Health, or any other agency. This list is not all inclusive.<br/> <br/> <strong>Types of Devices and Engineering Controls</strong><br/> <br/> Injection Equipment</p>
<ul>
<li>Hypodermic needles and syringes- sliding sheath/sleeve, needle guards</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Needleless jet injection</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Retractable needles</li>
</ul>
<p><br/> Medication Vial Adaptors (used to access ports of medication vials)<br/> IV Medication Delivery Systems</p>
<ul>
<li>Needle guards for pre-filled medication cartridges</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Needleless IV access-blunted cannulas</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Needleless valve/access ports and connectors</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Prefilled medication cartridge with safety needles</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Recessed/protected needle</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Needle guards for pre-filled medication cartridges</li>
</ul>
<p>IV Insertion Devices</p>
<ul>
<li>Shielded or retracting peripheral IV catheters</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Shielded midline IV catheters</li>
</ul>
<p>IV Catheter Securement Devices<br/> Epidural/Spinal Needles<br/> Blood Collection Devices</p>
<ul>
<li>Arterial blood gas syringes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Phlebotomy needles</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Safety-engineered blood collection needles</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Blood tube holders</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Closed venous sampling systems</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Plastic blood collection tubes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Butterfly blood collection needles</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Blood Donor Plebotomy Devices</li>
</ul>
<p>Other Catheter Equipment</p>
<ul>
<li>Guidewire Introducers-for venous and arterial access</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Central Venous Catheters</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Peripheral Inserted Central Catheters</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Radial Artery Catheters</li>
</ul>
<p>Umbilical cord sampling devices<br/> Lancets</p>
<ul>
<li>Laser lancet</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Retracting Lancet</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Strip Lancet</li>
</ul>
<p>Laboratory Devices</p>
<ul>
<li>Hemoglobin reader</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Mylar-wrapped glass capillary tubes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Plastic capillary tubes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Protected needles for blood culture vial access</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Vacuum tube stopper</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Plastic fingerstick sampling blood collection tube</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Slide preparation devices</li>
</ul>
<p>Surgical Devices</p>
<ul>
<li>Scalpels (disposable safety, retracting, shielded)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Ultrasonic scalpel</li>
</ul>
<p>Blunted Suture Needles (for internal suturing- fascia/muscles)<br/> Surgical Glues & Adhesives<br/> Alternative Skin Closure Devices<br/> Surgical Sharps Protection and Other Surgical Sharps Protection</p>
<ul>
<li>Hands free transfer disposable magnetic drapes</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Sharps counting and disposal system</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Magnetic floor sweep</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Scalpel blade removal system</li>
</ul>
<p>Hemodialysis and Apheresis Devices<br/> Fluid Sampling Devices<br/> Sharps Disposal or Destruction Containers<br/> Irrigation Splash Shield (Eliminates use of needles in debridement procedures)<br/> Blood Bank Devices</p>
<ul>
<li>Segment sampling devices</li>
</ul>
<p>Nuclear Medicine Devices<br/> Cut or puncture-resistant barrier products (gloves, liners or pads)<br/> Huber Needle and related devices<br/> Smallpox Vaccination Needles<br/> Vaginal Retractors<br/> Surgical Prep Razors<br/> Bone Marrow Collection Systems<br/> Dental Safety Devices</p>
<p><br/> <strong>To access this fact sheet online: <a href="http://www.state.tn.us/labor-wfd/sharpslist.pdf">www.state.tn.us/labor-wfd/sharpslist.pdf</a></strong><br/> <br/> The next list below contains web site resources that can be used for the purposes of information and research. The examples of effective engineering controls in this list do not include all those on the market, but are simply representative of the devices available. Neither the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development nor the Tennessee Department of Health approve, endorse, register or certify any medical devices. Inclusion on this list does not indicate approval, endorsement, registration or certification.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>International Health Care Worker Safety Center, University of Virginia:</strong><br/> <strong>Available:</strong> Features a list of safety devices with manufacturers and specific product names: <a href="http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/epinet/safetydevicenew.cfm">http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/epinet/safetydevicenew.cfm</a> and Safety in Surgery : <a href="http://healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/safetycenter/internetsafetycenterwebpages/SafetyinSurgery/SafetyinSurgery.cfm">http://healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/safetycenter/internetsafetycenterwebpages/SafetyinSurgery/SafetyinSurgery.cfm</a></p>
<p><strong>International Sharps Injury Prevention Society:</strong><br/> <strong>Available:</strong> <a href="http://www.isips.org/">http://www.isips.org/</a><br/> ISIPS is an international group of medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers, health organizations, healthcare professionals, medical waste disposal experts and others that are joining forces to provide education, information, and product knowledge that will help reduce the number of sharps injuries that occur each year. This website features a list of safety product categories with a description of the category and a list of safety products that fit under that category : <a href="http://www.isips.org/safetyproductlist.php">http://www.isips.org/safetyproductlist.php</a></p>
<p><br/> <strong>Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Alert:</strong> <strong>Needlestick and Other Risks from Hypodermic Needles on Secondary IV Administration Sets - Piggyback and Intermittent IV: <a href="http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/bloodbornepathogens/fdaletter.html">http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/bloodbornepathogens/fdaletter.html</a></strong><br/> Warns of the risk of needlestick injuries from the use of hypodermic needles as a connection between two pieces of intravenous (IV) equipment. Describes characteristics of devices which have the potential to decrease the risk.</p>
<p><br/> <strong>Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Glass Capillary Tubes: Joint Safety Advisory About Potential Risks : <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETATIONS&p_id=22695">http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETATIONS&p_id=22695</a></strong><br/> Describes safer alternatives to conventional glass capillary tubes.</p>
<p><br/> <strong>Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Needlestick Injuries Available: <a href="http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/bloodbornepathogens/index.html">http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/bloodbornepathogens/index.html</a></strong><br/> Features recent news, recognition, evaluation, controls, compliance, and links to information on effective engineering controls.</p>
<p><br/> <strong>Needle Safety <a href="http://www1.va.gov/vasafety/page.cfm?pg=119">http://www1.va.gov/vasafety/page.cfm?pg=119</a></strong><br/> Features needle safety information from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).</p>
<p><br/> <strong>Training for Development of Innovative Control Technologies (TDICT) Project Available: <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=2570">http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=2570</a></strong><br/> TDICT "Safety Feature Evaluation Forms" in Appendix B of this directive.</p>
<p><br/> <strong>OSHA Instruction CPL 2-2.69 Enforcement procedures for the Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens</strong><br/> <strong>Available: <a href="http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=2570">http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=2570</a></strong><br/> Instruction that establishes policies and provides clarification to ensure uniform inspection procedures are followed when conducting inspections to enforce the Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030).</p>
<p><br/> <strong>Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Guide List</strong><br/> Available: <a href="http://www.seiu.org">http://www.seiu.org</a></p>
Pre-Filled Syringe Warnings!
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-02-21:4605644:BlogPost:17307
2016-02-21T00:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722734?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="90" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722734?profile=original" width="113"></img></a> Sodium Chloride Injection USP 0.9% With Pre-filled Syringes</strong><br></br> <br></br> ***Warnings***<br></br> <br></br> Air Embolism<br></br> <br></br> REMOVE ALL AIR FROM THE PRE-FILLED SYRINGE AND ASSOCIATED TUBING PRIOR TO INJECTION TO AVOID AIR EMBOLUS WITH THE ASSOCIATED RISK OF STROKE, ORGAN ISCHEMIA AND/OR INFARCTION, AND…</p>
<p><strong><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722734?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722734?profile=original" width="113" height="90"/></a>Sodium Chloride Injection USP 0.9% With Pre-filled Syringes</strong><br/> <br/> ***Warnings***<br/> <br/> Air Embolism<br/> <br/> REMOVE ALL AIR FROM THE PRE-FILLED SYRINGE AND ASSOCIATED TUBING PRIOR TO INJECTION TO AVOID AIR EMBOLUS WITH THE ASSOCIATED RISK OF STROKE, ORGAN ISCHEMIA AND/OR INFARCTION, AND DEATH.</p>
Safest Vial Labeling System On The Market!
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2016-01-21:4605644:BlogPost:17214
2016-01-21T02:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722377?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722377?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>View Company -----> <a href="http://www.iwatalabel.co.jp/eg/itemf/label01.htm">http://www.iwatalabel.co.jp/eg/itemf/label01.htm</a></p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722377?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722377?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>View Company -----> <a href="http://www.iwatalabel.co.jp/eg/itemf/label01.htm">http://www.iwatalabel.co.jp/eg/itemf/label01.htm</a></p>
Sen. Franken Introduces Bill to Get Medical Devices to Market More Quickly and Safely
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2012-01-30:4605644:BlogPost:9603
2012-01-30T12:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<h1 class="page-title fancy_font"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722170?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="181" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722170?profile=original" width="220"></img></a> Sen. Franken Introduces Bill to Get Medical Devices to Market More Quickly and Safely</h1>
<div class="inner-lyt-dates">Tuesday, November 15, 2011</div>
<p>Today, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) introduced the Patient Access to Medical Innovation Act to get innovative medical devices to market more quickly and safely. Sens. Lamar Alexander…</p>
<h1 class="page-title fancy_font"><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722170?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722170?profile=original" width="220" height="181"/></a>Sen. Franken Introduces Bill to Get Medical Devices to Market More Quickly and Safely</h1>
<div class="inner-lyt-dates">Tuesday, November 15, 2011</div>
<p>Today, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) introduced the Patient Access to Medical Innovation Act to get innovative medical devices to market more quickly and safely. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are the lead cosponsors of Sen. Franken’s legislation.<br/> <br/> “After speaking with countless patients, doctors, and members of the medical device industry in Minnesota, I’ve learned that certain barriers in the regulatory process are making it harder to get patients the medical devices they need,” said Sen. Franken. “My legislation would remove unnecessary barriers so that these critical medical devices get to the patients that need them as quickly and safely as possible.” <br/> <br/> Sen. Franken’s Patient Access to Medical Innovation Act would:</p>
<ul>
<li>Promote the development of devices to treat patients with rare diseases;</li>
<li>Help improve the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval process for medical devices by allowing the agency to more easily consult with experts;</li>
<li>Lift the current profit cap on "humanitarian use devices"-- devices that treat rare conditions-- that go through a special approval process. Eliminating this red tape will support the development of treatments for people with rare conditions.</li>
</ul>
<p>Yesterday, Sen. Franken visited Medtronic in Mounds View, MN, and met with several hundred company officials and employees to discuss his new legislation. While there he also met with doctors and patients who may be helped by his legislation. They all agreed on the need for these reforms during his visit.<br/> <br/> Today, Sen. Franken is also participating in a hearing on medical devices in the Senate health committee, of which he is a member. And Minnesotan Ralph Hall, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the CEO of MR3, a start-up medical device company, will testify before the committee.</p>
<p></p>
<p>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p><a href="http://franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1849" target="_blank">Patient Access to Medical Innovation Act</a></p>
<p>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://www.Syringes.co" target="_blank">www.Syringes.co</a></p>
<p></p>
Selling Syringes Without A Prescription...The Pro's and Con's
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-12-05:4605644:BlogPost:7902
2011-12-05T15:15:16.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" height="557" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original" width="389"></img></a> More than 3,000 pharmacies, health care facilities and practitioners have registered with the Department of Health (DOH) to sell or furnish syringes to those age 18 and over without a prescription under the ESAP.<br></br><br></br>This program makes syringes available without a prescription and promotes the safe disposal of used syringes. Research has shown this program effectively…</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3348722512?profile=original" height="557" width="389"/></a>More than 3,000 pharmacies, health care facilities and practitioners have registered with the Department of Health (DOH) to sell or furnish syringes to those age 18 and over without a prescription under the ESAP.<br/><br/>This program makes syringes available without a prescription and promotes the safe disposal of used syringes. Research has shown this program effectively reduces transmission of blood-borne pathogens as a result of needle sharing and reuse and may increase safe disposal of used syringes. ESAP providers sell two to three million non-prescription syringes a year and the need for unrestricted access to syringes remains high. Only two states, Delaware and New Jersey, do not allow the sale of syringes without a prescription.<br/><br/>In a 2003 report, the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) stated that ESAP "has great potential to prevent transmission of blood-borne diseases without any detrimental effect on syringe disposal, drug use or crime." NYAM's recommendation included: (1) enacting legislation to allow the program to continue permanently (which occurred as part of the 2009-10 enacted budget); (2) lifting the restriction on pharmacy advertising; (3) continuing education and outreach; (4) continuing safe syringe disposal education; and (5) expanding disposal options. At the time of the program's extension through 2007, NYAM again noted the importance of syringe access, indicating that expanded syringe access "is critically important to stemming the spread of infectious disease." Numerous studies published in peer-reviewed journals have attested to the value of ESAP in reducing syringe sharing and re-use and preventing disease transmission.<br/><br/>This bill would eliminate two restrictions on the sale of syringes to further the objectives of ESAP. First, the bill would remove the restriction on the number of syringes that may be sold or furnished, leaving the matter to the discretion of the individual ESAP provider. The current limit of 10 syringes per transaction was first implemented when ESAP was a demonstration project. Removing the limitation would better serve individuals who use this program by ensuring that they have enough clean syringes to prevent reusing or sharing syringes. For individuals in rural regions of the State, removing this restriction will facilitate access, particularly when it may be difficult or time-consuming to get to a pharmacy to purchase or dispose of used syringes.<br/><br/>Second, the bill would permit pharmacies to advertise the availability of syringes to the public. Of the 3,300 pharmacies, health care facilities and practitioners that have registered with DOH as part of ESAP, more than 97 percent are pharmacies. The public health function that they serve is compromised if potential customers are unaware of which pharmacies are registered ESAP providers. Appropriate pharmacy advertising can supplement the efforts of DOH to promote ESAP and provide consumers with access to information that they need to make informed choices.</p>
<p></p>
<pre><strong>~ S5312-2011: Relates to hypodermic syringes</strong> <br/><br/> <a title="QD Syringe Systems®" href="http://www.qdss.co/" target="_blank">www.QDSS.co</a> <br/><br/>----------------------</pre>
OSHA Answers Questions Regarding The Needlestick Prevention Act
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-12-03:4605644:BlogPost:7701
2011-12-03T14:52:13.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949812?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" height="410" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949812?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="549"></img></a></strong></p>
<p><strong><br></br></strong></p>
<p><strong>Does the standard apply to public sector (State and local government) employees?</strong><br></br><br></br>Federal OSHA standards do not apply to public sector employees, but the 24 states and two territories that operate OSHA-approved state plans are required to enforce an "at least as effective" standard in the public…</p>
<p><strong><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949812?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949812?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" height="410" width="549"/></a></strong></p>
<p><strong><br/></strong></p>
<p><strong>Does the standard apply to public sector (State and local government) employees?</strong><br/><br/>Federal OSHA standards do not apply to public sector employees, but the 24 states and two territories that operate OSHA-approved state plans are required to enforce an "at least as effective" standard in the public sector.<br/><br/><strong>Does the "Needlestick Act" apply to me?</strong><br/><br/>OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, including its 2001 revisions, applies to all employers who have employees with reasonably anticipated occupational exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials (OPIM). These employers must implement the applicable requirements set forth in the standard. Some of the new and clarified provisions in the standard apply only to healthcare activities, but some of the provisions, particularly the requirements to update the Exposure Control Plan and to keep a sharps injury log, will apply to non-healthcare as well as healthcare activities.<br/><br/><strong>By what date do we have to implement safer medical devices?</strong><br/><br/>The requirement to implement safer medical devices is not new. However, the revised standard further clarifies what is meant by "engineering controls" in the original 1991 Bloodborne Pathogens standard by adding language to the definition section of the standard that reflects the development and availability of new safer medical devices over the last decade. The 1991 standard states, "engineering and work practice controls shall be used to eliminate or minimize employee exposure." The revision defines Engineering Controls as "controls (e.g., sharps disposal containers, self-sheathing needles, safer medical devices, such as sharps with engineered sharps injury protections and needleless systems) that isolate or remove the bloodborne pathogens hazard from the workplace." Consequently, you should already have safer devices in place. If you have not already evaluated and implemented appropriate and available engineering controls, you must do so now. Also, employees with occupational exposure to blood and OPIM must be trained regarding the proper use of all engineering and work practice controls.<br/><br/><strong>What if I've never had an employee experience a needlestick, do I still need to use safer devices?</strong><br/><br/>Yes. OSHA standards are intended to be implemented as a means to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses. In order to most effectively avoid percutaneous injuries from contaminated sharps, employees must use engineering controls, including safer medical devices.<br/><br/><strong>How many non-managerial employees do I need to include in the process of choosing safer medical devices?</strong><br/><br/>Small medical offices may want to seek input from all employees when making their decisions. Larger facilities are not required to request input from all exposed employees; however, the employees selected should represent the range of exposure situations encountered in the workplace (e.g., pediatrics, emergency department, etc.). The solicitation of employees who have been involved in the input and evaluation process must be documented in the Exposure Control Plan.<br/><br/><strong>Does OSHA have a list of available safer medical devices?</strong><br/><br/>No. OSHA does not approve or endorse any product. It is your responsibility as an employer to determine which engineering controls are appropriate for specific hazards, based on what is appropriate to the specific medical procedures being conducted, what is feasible, and what is commercially available.<br/><br/><strong>What if a safer option is not available for the medical device that I use?</strong><br/><br/>A key element in choosing a safer medical device, other than its appropriateness to the procedure and effectiveness, is its availability on the market. If there is no safer option for a particular medical device used where there is exposure to blood or OPIM, you are not required to use something other than the device that is normally used. During your annual review of devices, you must inquire about new or prospective safer options and document this fact in your written Exposure Control Plan. With increasing medical technology, more devices are becoming available for different procedures. If no engineering control is available, work practice controls shall be used and, if occupational exposure still remains, personal protective equipment must also be used.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.osha.gov/index.html" title="OSHA.gov">http://www.osha.gov</a></p>
Needlestick Safety And Prevention Act ::: Frequently Asked Questions
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-12-03:4605644:BlogPost:7502
2011-12-03T14:39:57.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949401?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" height="532" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949401?profile=original" width="400"></img></a></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong><br></br></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>What is the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act?</strong></span><br></br><br></br>The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act (the Act) (Pub. L. 106-430) was signed into law on November 6, 2000. Because occupational…</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949401?profile=original"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3338949401?profile=original" height="532" width="400"/></a></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong><br/></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>What is the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act?</strong></span><br/><br/>The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act (the Act) (Pub. L. 106-430) was signed into law on November 6, 2000. Because occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens from accidental sharps injuries in healthcare and other occupational settings continues to be a serious problem, Congress felt that a modification to OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard was appropriate (29 CFR 1910.1030) to set forth in greater detail (and make more specific) OSHA's requirement for employers to identify, evaluate, and implement safer medical devices. The Act also mandated additional requirements for maintaining a sharps injury log and for the involvement of non-managerial healthcare workers in evaluating and choosing devices.<br/><br/><strong>How does the "Needlestick Act" apply to OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard?</strong><br/><br/>The Act directed OSHA to revise its Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030). OSHA published the revised standard in the Federal Register on January 18, 2001; it took effect on April 18, 2001. The agency implemented a 90-day outreach and education effort for both OSHA staff and the regulated public before beginning enforcement of the new requirements. Accordingly, OSHA will not enforce the new provisions of the standard (requiring employers to maintain a sharps injury log and to involve non-managerial employees in selecting safer needle devices) until July 17, 2001. (The requirement to implement the use of engineering controls, which includes safer medical devices, has been in effect since 1992).<br/><br/><strong>How does the revision affect states that operate their own federally-approved occupational safety and health programs?</strong><br/><br/>States and territories that operate their own OSHA-approved state programs must adopt the revisions to the bloodborne pathogens standard, or adopt a more stringent amendment to their existing standard, by Oct. 18, 2001. (NOTE: The original adoption date for state plan states was July 18, 2001 (or six months from the date the standard was published in the Federal Register). However, an additional three months was added which coincides with the Federal 90-day education campaign).<br/><br/><a href="http://www.osha.gov/index.html" title="OSHA.gov">http://www.osha.gov</a></p>
Do We Have To Keep A Sharps Injury Log?
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-12-03:4605644:BlogPost:7801
2011-12-03T14:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><strong>What if the safer device that I choose is on back order?</strong><br></br><br></br>Safety equipment must be available at all times. If for some reason an engineering control is not available (due to supply shortages, back orders, shipping delays, etc.), this must be documented in your Exposure Control Plan. You would then be responsible to implement the chosen control(s) as soon as it becomes available and adjust your exposure control plan to illustrate such. In the meantime, work practice…</p>
<p><strong>What if the safer device that I choose is on back order?</strong><br/><br/>Safety equipment must be available at all times. If for some reason an engineering control is not available (due to supply shortages, back orders, shipping delays, etc.), this must be documented in your Exposure Control Plan. You would then be responsible to implement the chosen control(s) as soon as it becomes available and adjust your exposure control plan to illustrate such. In the meantime, work practice controls must be used and, if occupational exposure still remains, personal protective equipment must also be used.<br/><br/><strong>Do I have to keep a sharps injury log? Does it have to be confidential?</strong><br/><br/>If, as an employer, you are required to maintain a log of occupational injuries and illnesses under 29 CFR 1904, you must also establish and maintain a sharps injury log for recording percutaneous injuries from contaminated sharps. The Sharps Log must contain, at a minimum, information about the injury, the type and brand of device involved in the injury (if known), the department or work area where the exposure occurred, and an explanation of how the incident occurred. The log must be recorded and maintained in such a manner so as to protect the confidentiality of the injured employee (e.g., removal of personal identifiers).<br/><br/><strong>Does the revised Bloodborne Pathogens Standard apply to medical or dental offices that have fewer than 10 employees?</strong><br/><br/>OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard applies to all employers with employees who have occupational exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials (OPIM), regardless of how many workers are employed. However, workplaces with 10 or fewer employees are exempt from OSHA recordkeeping requirements and are also exempt from recording and maintaining a Sharps Injury Log. (See 29 CFR 1904 for applicability of recordkeeping requirements). All other applicable provisions of the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard still apply.<br/><br/><strong>What new information do I need to include in my written Exposure Control Plan? How often to I need to update it?</strong><br/><br/>In addition to what is already required by the 1991 standard, the revised standard requires the documentation of (1) annual consideration and implementation of appropriate engineering controls, and (2) solicitation of non-managerial healthcare workers in evaluating and choosing devices. The plan must be reviewed and updated at least annually.<br/><br/><strong>Where can I get information about what is expected of me?</strong><br/><br/>There are several resources available for employers and employees with regard to occupational exposures to blood and OPIM. First, of course, is the OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030). Also available are "CPL 2-2.69 (November 2001). Enforcement Procedures for the Occupational Exposure to Bloodborne Pathogens, and many other related documents. You may access this information, as well as information from OSHA's Consultation and State Plan State Offices, via OSHA's website at <a href="http://www.osha.gov">http://www.osha.gov</a> or by phone at 1-800-321-OSHA. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also have several documents related to the prevention of occupational exposure to blood and OPIM.<br/><br/></p>
No more tragedies: an introduction to ISO 80369
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-11-24:4605644:BlogPost:7201
2011-11-24T14:23:19.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><span class="font-size-4" style="color: #3366ff;">No more tragedies: an introduction to ISO 80369</span></p>
<p><em>by Laura Dowling</em></p>
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<p>A hospital patient should never be injured, or worse, because a hospital employee accidentally connects a small tube carrying medicine or nutrients to the wrong tube outside the patient's body.<br></br><br></br>That's what happened to Robin Rogers in 2006.<br></br><br></br>According to the New York Times, a hospital nurse caring for Rogers during her final…</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4" style="color: #3366ff;">No more tragedies: an introduction to ISO 80369</span></p>
<p><em>by Laura Dowling</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>A hospital patient should never be injured, or worse, because a hospital employee accidentally connects a small tube carrying medicine or nutrients to the wrong tube outside the patient's body.<br/><br/>That's what happened to Robin Rogers in 2006.<br/><br/>According to the New York Times, a hospital nurse caring for Rogers during her final weeks of pregnancy inadvertently connected a feeding tube with liquid nutrients to an IV in Rogers' arm. The Times noted, "Putting such food directly into the bloodstream is like pouring concrete down a drain." She died shortly after.<br/><br/>Today, a new industry-wide standard defined as ISO 80369 is under development to help eliminate these heartbreaking tragedies. Once completed in the coming years, the international ISO 80369 standard will provide strict guidelines for manufacturers to produce non-interchangeable connectors that only can be used between devices intended for the same clinical application. As the Times noted, the non-interchangeable connectors will be made incompatible "just as different nozzles at gas stations prevent drivers from using the wrong fuel."<br/><br/>The products at the core of ISO 80369 are small-bore luer connectors (less than 8.5 mm in diameter) that hospital personnel use to link, for example, a medicine bag to an IV. The male and female components of luer connectors join together to create secure, yet detachable, leak-proof connections. Multiple connections between medical devices and tubing are common in patient care. Although tiny, these inexpensive connectors play an extremely critical role in any medical device.<br/><br/>ISO 80369 is a package consisting of seven sections of standards. The first section, titled "General Requirements" is the initial governing document that was finalized in April this year. Six additional sections--each meticulously focusing on tube connectors for a specific clinical application and market--must be in place in the coming years.</p>
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Needlestick Video Must see...
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-10-21:4605644:BlogPost:5702
2011-10-21T10:30:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
Nurses, physicians and health care workers suffer an estimated 800,000 accidental needle stick injuries each year in U.S. hospitals. Many become infected with deadly diseases like HIV and hepatitis. Dr. Manny takes a look at the new movie “Puncture,” which sheds some light on this problem ::: See the video on Needle-sticks and consequences ~…
Nurses, physicians and health care workers suffer an estimated 800,000 accidental needle stick injuries each year in U.S. hospitals. Many become infected with deadly diseases like HIV and hepatitis. Dr. Manny takes a look at the new movie “Puncture,” which sheds some light on this problem ::: See the video on Needle-sticks and consequences ~ <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/1229080579001/new-movie-exposes-health-care-danger/">http://video.foxnews.com/v/1229080579001/new-movie-exposes-health-care-danger/</a>
Is There A Medical Device Monopoly?
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-09-26:4605644:BlogPost:4601
2011-09-26T13:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<p><span class="font-size-3" style="color: #3366ff;"><strong>Movie Puncture Exposes <span style="color: #ff0000;">Hep B&C, HIV Dangers</span> in Needlestick Injuries for Nurses, Healthcare Workers</strong></span><br></br> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="288" width="512"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="false"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><param name="wmode" value="opaque"></param><param name="src" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/7bV24Bmwyii9XB9vLc9-ag"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="false"></param><embed allowfullscreen="false" allowscriptaccess="never" height="288" src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/7bV24Bmwyii9XB9vLc9-ag" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="512" wmode="opaque"></embed> </object>
<br></br><br></br><span class="font-size-3"><strong>The movie Puncture reveals the untold true story of the enormous risks faced every day by nurses and healthcare workers exposed to dangerous and deadly bloodborne pathogens (Hepatitis B, C and HIV) through…</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #3366ff;" class="font-size-3"><strong>Movie Puncture Exposes <span style="color: #ff0000;">Hep B&C, HIV Dangers</span> in Needlestick Injuries for Nurses, Healthcare Workers</strong></span><br/> <object height="288" width="512" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="false"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><param name="wmode" value="opaque"></param><param name="src" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/7bV24Bmwyii9XB9vLc9-ag"></param><param name="allowfullscreen" value="false"></param><embed wmode="opaque" height="288" width="512" src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/7bV24Bmwyii9XB9vLc9-ag" allowscriptaccess="never" allowfullscreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed> </object>
<br/><br/><span class="font-size-3"><strong>The movie Puncture reveals the untold true story of the enormous risks faced every day by nurses and healthcare workers exposed to dangerous and deadly bloodborne pathogens (Hepatitis B, C and HIV) through accidental needlestick injuries. Chris Evans plays the underdog attorney who takes on a medical device monopoly that sacrifices nurse and healthcare worker safety by preventing access to life saving needle innovations</strong></span><br/><br/><em>PR Newswire</em><br/><br/>LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20, 2011<br/><br/>LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Captain America star Chris Evans plays an unusual attorney in Puncture who takes up the cause of a local ER nurse who contracts HIV after an accidental needlestick injury on the job. He emerges as an unlikely hero who takes on a medical device monopoly, fighting a landmark legal case to get safety needles into the hands of every American healthcare worker.<br/><br/>Puncture reveals the untold story of the enormous risks faced every day by nurses and healthcare workers exposed to dangerous and deadly bloodborne pathogens Hepatitis B, C and HIV through contaminated needlesticks, sharps, or splash exposures. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 800,000 accidental needlestick injuries have occurred annually.<br/><br/>The underdog lawyer wages a contemporary David and Goliath battle against the medical device industry forces that block front line healthcare worker access to proven safety needle innovation for blood drawing and infusion.<br/><br/>The classic "one person-against the odds" cautionary tale portrays the issues leading up to the passage of the U.S. Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act 2000 and the added protection under the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Act Administration (OSHA) and its Bloodborne Pathogens Standard.<br/><br/>For the global healthcare worker industry and advocacy community, Puncture brings all the urgency and passion of this real-life story to screen, illustrates the daily realities of the workplace and the underlying forces that restrict the purchase and use of safer needle products.<br/><br/>Puncture opens Sept. 23 in New York (Empire 25, Sunshine), Los Angeles (The Landmark) and Houston (River Oaks); Oct. 7 in additional cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C.; and will be everywhere this fall.<br/><br/><em>SOURCE Millennium Entertainment, LLC</em></p>
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<p><strong><span class="font-size-4"><em><span style="color: #ff0000;">QD</span> Syringe Systems</em></span></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.safetysyringe.ning.com">www.safetysyringe.ning.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.SafetySyringe.cc">www.SafetySyringe.cc</a></p>
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What Are Group Purchasing Organizations (GPO's)?
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-09-25:4605644:BlogPost:4401
2011-09-25T02:00:00.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<h4><span class="font-size-6" id="Healthcare_GPO" style="color: #0000ff;">Healthcare GPO</span></h4>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><em><b>Examples</b> - <a class="external text" href="http://www.pdmhealthcare.com/" rel="nofollow">PDM Healthcare</a> Premier, MedAssets, Veira Medical Group, Amerinet, HealthTrust, GroupSource, MediGroup, Provista, Novation, Innovatix, HPS, HPSI, GNYHA Services, and Care Purchasing Services.</em></span></p>
<p><br></br> A healthcare group purchasing organization (GPOs)…</p>
<h4><span style="color: #0000ff;" class="font-size-6" id="Healthcare_GPO">Healthcare GPO</span></h4>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><em><b>Examples</b> - <a href="http://www.pdmhealthcare.com/" class="external text" rel="nofollow">PDM Healthcare</a> Premier, MedAssets, Veira Medical Group, Amerinet, HealthTrust, GroupSource, MediGroup, Provista, Novation, Innovatix, HPS, HPSI, GNYHA Services, and Care Purchasing Services.</em></span></p>
<p><br/> A healthcare group purchasing organization (GPOs) assists in promoting quality healthcare relief and assists diverse providers in effectively managing expenses. A GPO aggregates the purchasing volume of its members for various goods and services and develops contracts with suppliers through which members may buy at group price and terms if they choose to. GPOs typically provide contracted discounts on medical supplies, nutrition, pharmacy and laboratory. Some of the large GPOs have expanded contract portfolios to also offer discounts on office supplies and non-medical related services.</p>
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<p>Several large healthcare GPOs are totally owned by non-profit hospitals and health systems, which in effect pool their sourcing and contracting in a cooperative or other corporate form. The larger scale of their pooled volume attracts pricing and terms more favorable than a single buyer can attract alone. The GPO owners achieve cost-savings on the goods they choose to buy through group contracts, and also receive distributions back from GPO earnings if operating revenues exceed expenses. GPO members that are not owners benefit from savings made possible by group contracts but typically do not share in GPO distributions of earnings. GPOs submit that their services allow for improved operating margins for healthcare providers, and that members enjoy value added benefits like clinical support, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarking" title="Benchmarking">benchmarking</a> data, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain" title="Supply chain">supply chain</a> support and comprehensive portfolios of products and services to address specific needs.<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_purchasing_organization#cite_note-0"><span> </span></a></sup></p>
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<p>It is important to note, that GPOs may collect an "Administrative" fee up to 3.0% of all sales volumes from the vendors that they negotiate a contract from, upon selling products to their member hospitals. While it behooves GPOs to negotiate lower prices for their members, the lower the price they negotiate means also lower revenues that they receive. As a result, more health care industry GPOs are collecting 'bonus' payments from suppliers, which amount to kickbacks for the GPO. Additionally, some health care industry GPOs are signing single source contracts resulting in members of the GPO overpaying for supplies and sometimes, <strong>not being able to get access to superior products.</strong> <sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_purchasing_organization#cite_note-1"><span> </span></a></sup>However, privately owned GPOs that are not affiliated with a medical facility, such as a hospital, aim to beat market prices in order to win new members.</p>
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<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_purchasing_organization" target="_blank">Wikipedia.org Defines ~ Group Purchasing Organizations</a></p>
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Dirty Medicine
tag:qdsyringesystems.com,2011-09-23:4605644:BlogPost:4204
2011-09-23T16:31:12.000Z
Christopher Green
https://qdsyringesystems.com/profile/ChrisGreen
<span class="font-size-5" style="color: #ff0000;">Dirty Medicine</span><br></br><br></br><span style="color: #ff6600;"><em>How medical supply behemoths stick it to the little guy, making America’s health care system more dangerous and expensive.</em></span><br></br><br></br><strong>By Mariah Blake</strong><br></br><br></br>=========================================================<br></br><br></br>When Thomas Shaw gets worked up, he twists in his chair and kneads his hand. Or he paces about in his tube socks grumbling,…
<span class="font-size-5" style="color: #ff0000;">Dirty Medicine</span><br/><br/><span style="color: #ff6600;"><em>How medical supply behemoths stick it to the little guy, making America’s health care system more dangerous and expensive.</em></span><br/><br/><strong>By Mariah Blake</strong><br/><br/>=========================================================<br/><br/>When Thomas Shaw gets worked up, he twists in his chair and kneads his hand. Or he paces about in his tube socks grumbling, “They’re trying to destroy us,” and “The whole thing is a giant scam.” And Shaw, the founder of a medical device maker called Retractable Technologies, spends a lot of time being agitated.<br/><br/>One of the topics that gets him most riled up these days is bloodstream infections. And with good reason—while most people rarely think about them, these are the most dangerous of the hospital-acquired bugs that afflict one in ten patients in the United States. Their spread has helped to make contact with our health care system the fifth leading cause of death in this country.<br/><br/>A few years ago, Shaw, an engineer by training, decided he wanted to do something to help solve this problem and quickly homed in on the mechanics of needle-less IV catheters. Rather than using needles to inject drugs into IV systems, most hospitals have moved to a new design, which involves screwing the threaded tip of a needle-less syringe into a specially designed port. The problem is that if the tip brushes against a nurse’s scrubs, or a counter, or the railing of a hospital bed, it can pick up bacteria. And the rugged threaded surface makes it difficult to get rid of the germs once they’re there. Often, the bacteria go straight into the patients’ bloodstream—which explains why, according to some studies, the rate of bloodstream infections is three times higher with needle-less systems than with their needle-based counterparts.<br/><br/>After months of trial and error, Shaw hit on the idea of surrounding the tip of the syringe with six petal-like flanges, which could flare open to make way for the catheter port. Unlike some of the solutions floated by big medical device makers, such as coating the ports with silver, Shaw’s innovation added only a few pennies to the cost of production. And it seemed to be remarkably effective: a 2007 clinical study funded by Shaw’s company and conducted by the independent SGS Laboratories found the device prevented germs from being transferred to catheters nearly 100 percent of the time.<br/><br/>Given these facts, you might expect that hospitals would be lining up to buy Shaw’s product. But that is not the case, even though his company is offering to match whatever price medical facilities are paying for their current, infection-prone IV catheter syringes. In fact, since the device hit the market two years ago, Retractable has sold fewer than 20,000 units, mostly to one New York hospital. Often, the company’s sales team can’t even get in the door to show their wares to purchasing agents. “The product does exactly what it is supposed to do,” Shaw says. “But it has one fatal flaw. Right there at the bottom of the handle it says Retractable Technologies.”<br/><br/>This is hardly the first time Shaw has found his path to market blocked. In fact, he has spent the last fifteen years watching his potentially game-changing inventions collect dust on warehouse shelves. And the same is true of countless other small medical suppliers. Their plight is just the most visible outgrowth of the tangled system hospitals use to purchase their supplies—a system built on a seemingly minor provision in Medicare law that few people even know about. It’s a system that has stifled innovation and kept lifesaving medical devices off the market. And while it’s supposed to curb prices, it may actually be driving up the cost of medical supplies, the second largest expenditure for our nation’s hospitals and clinics and a major contributor to the ballooning cost of health care, which consumes nearly a fifth of our gross domestic product.<br/><br/>Thomas Shaw is a lanky fifty-nine-year-old man with dark eyes and a shock of gray hair that gives him a bit of a mad scientist air. Growing up, he lived in Mexico and Arizona, where his father worked as a chemist (among other things, the elder Shaw invented the first nitrogen test for plants). Shaw describes his childhood home as a kind of frenetic laboratory where science and math problems were worked out on a chalkboard that hung over the dinner table.<br/><br/>After high school, Shaw went on to study engineering at the University of Arizona, and eventually launched his own engineering firm in a former bicycle-repair shop on a rundown strip in Lewisville, Texas. His core business was small-town building projects, like road repairs and structural inspections, but he also dabbled in medical devices. At one point, a friend’s grandmother underwent gallbladder surgery and came out addled and confused. Believing a medication mix-up was to blame, Shaw invented an automated pill dispenser.<br/><br/>Then, one night in the late 1980s, Shaw saw a news program about a doctor in California who had been infected with HIV after being stuck with a contaminated needle. This got Shaw’s attention. One of his oldest friends had recently been diagnosed with AIDS, and Shaw was all too aware of the ravages of the disease. “I thought, I can’t do anything to save my friends,” he recalls. “But maybe I could do something to save other people.”<br/><br/>The next day, Shaw set to work trying to invent a safer syringe. He began buying pigs’ feet from the local butcher and using them to simulate injections. He outfitted every room in his engineering firm with chalkboards so he could draw design ideas whenever they popped into his head. To make time for the syringe venture alongside his regular work, he started pulling ninety-five-hour weeks. And even when he was on vacation, he rarely stopped obsessing. “I remember being in South Padre Island with my wife and kids,” Shaw recalls. “Everyone wanted to go out and play. I wouldn’t go anywhere until I figured out what to do with the back corner of the syringe. I told my wife, ‘I have to work on it all the time until I get it or I’m dead.’”<br/><br/>It took four years and more than 150 design permutations, but Shaw finally came up with a crude prototype and found a local physician to test it on him—an event Shaw’s wife documented with a shaky handheld camcorder. In the video, the doctor holds up a saline-filled syringe about the size of a kielbasa sausage. Then he jabs the needle into Shaw’s arm and pauses for a second before pushing in the plunger. First the saline empties, and then the needle snaps back into the barrel with a pop.<br/><br/>Shaw had just invented the first retractable syringe, a fact that drew the attention of public health officials. In 1993, the National Institutes of Health gave him a $600,000 grant to shrink it down to the size of an ordinary hypodermic and produce 50,000 of them for clinical trials. Shaw was now able to bring on a team of engineers and product designers, and turn a cinderblock bay adjoining the old bicycle shop into a clean room. By the mid-1990s, he had the final design in hand.<br/><br/>Around this time, Shaw launched Retractable Technologies and began searching for funds to build a factory in Little Elm, Texas. Eventually, he raised $42 million, much of it from doctors at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. “Everyone was eager to invest,” recalls Lawrence Mills, who was then chief of thoracic surgery at the hospital and invested $95,000 in Shaw’s company. “We all thought it was just a matter of time before it became the standard in the industry.”<br/><br/>In 1996, Shaw returned to Presbyterian to conduct a final round of clinical trials. The nurses who took part gave his syringe uniformly high marks (though some complained in the follow-up survey that the packaging was hard to open and that the air bubbles were difficult to get out), and Presbyterian’s top medical brass was clamoring to get it into the supply rooms. Edward Goodman, the hospital’s director of infection control, wrote a letter to the purchasing department, saying Shaw’s product was “essential to the safety and health of our employees, staff and patients.” But Shaw soon learned that the enthusiasm of health care workers was not enough to gain him entrée; the hospital initially promised him a contract, only to back out three months later. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, Shaw had just stumbled into the path of a juggernaut.<br/><br/>Breaking into the medical supply market has always been tough, in part because for decades the business has been dominated by a handful of behemoth suppliers. In the case of syringes, the incumbent heavyweight has long been Becton Dickinson, or BD, a New Jersey–based company that controls 70 percent of the syringe market and has a lengthy history of trampling competitors. As early as 1960, BD was brought up on Justice Department charges for its anticompetitive practices—among them price fixing, buying up patents to kill its rivals’ innovations, and forcing hospitals to buy its syringes to get other essential supplies, some of which were only produced by BD.<br/><br/>Often, these large companies used their clout to squeeze hospitals on prices. To keep costs in check, in the 1970s many medical facilities began banding together to form group purchasing organizations, or GPOs. The underlying idea was simple: because suppliers generally give price breaks to customers who buy large quantities, hospitals could get better deals on, say, gauze or gloves, if a group of them came together and bargained for ten cases, rather than each hospital buying a case on its own.<br/><br/>Originally, these purchasing groups were nonprofit collectives and were managed and funded by the hospitals themselves. But in the mid-1970s, the model began to shift. Some large hospital chains started to spin off for-profit GPO subsidiaries, which other hospitals could join by paying membership dues, much the way members of buying clubs like Costco pay dues to get bulk-buying discounts. By decade’s end, virtually every hospital in America belonged to a GPO.<br/><br/>Then, in 1986 Congress passed a bill exempting GPOs from the anti-kickback provisions embedded in Medicare law. This meant that instead of collecting membership dues, GPOs could collect “fees”—in other industries they might be called kickbacks or bribes—from suppliers in the form of a share of sales revenue. (For example, in exchange for signing a contract with a given gauze maker, a GPO might get a percentage of whatever the company made selling gauze to members.) The idea was to help struggling hospitals by shifting the burden of funding GPOs’ operations to vendors. To prevent abuse, “fees” of more than 3 percent of sales were supposed to be reported to member hospitals and (upon request) the secretary of health and human services.<br/><br/>But, as with many well-intended laws, the shift had some ground-shaking unintended consequences. Most importantly, it turned the incentives for GPOs upside down. Instead of being tied to the dues paid by members, GPOs’ revenues were now tied to the profits of the suppliers they were supposed to be pressing for lower prices. This created an incentive to cater to the sellers rather than to the buyers—to big companies like Becton Dickinson rather than to member hospitals. Before long, large suppliers began using “fees”—sometimes very generous ones—along with tiered pricing to secure deals that locked GPO members into buying their products. In many cases, hospitals were obliged to buy virtually all of their bandages or scalpels or heart monitors from one company. GPOs also began offering package deals that bundled products together. To get the best price on stethoscopes, a hospital might have to agree to buy everything from pacemakers to cotton balls from the GPO’s preferred vendors. Hospitals went along because they got price breaks, usually in the form of rebates if they met buying quotas.<br/><br/>This situation only grew thornier in 1996, when the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission overhauled antitrust rules and granted the organizations protection from antitrust actions, except under “extraordinary circumstances.” Once again, the idea was to help struggling hospitals, this time by allowing the buying groups to grow big enough to negotiate the best deals for their members. But the decision led to a frenzy of consolidation. Within a few years, five GPOs controlled purchasing for 90 percent of the nation’s hospitals, which only amplified the clout of big suppliers.<br/><br/>As it turns out, Shaw’s retractable syringe hit just as these trends were converging. In fact, the year his product came onto the market, three of the nation’s largest GPOs merged to form a company called Premier, which managed buying for 1,700 hospitals, or about a third of all hospitals in the United States. Shortly thereafter, Premier signed a $1.8 billion, seven-and-a-half-year deal with Becton Dickinson. Under the agreement, member hospitals—among them Dallas-based Presbyterian, where Shaw would hit a brick wall—had to buy 90 percent of their syringes and blood collection tubes from the company. Over the next two years, BD landed similar deals with all but one major GPO. As a result, almost everywhere Shaw turned, he found hospital doors were closed to him.<br/><br/>Nevertheless, Shaw soldiered on and managed to score a few victories. He landed a number of contracts with government agencies, including the VA, that negotiate directly with vendors for supplies. Or he sold his wares to systems so small and poor that they weren’t on the GPOs’ radar—prisons, nursing homes, Indian reservations, and the like. He also teamed up with the SEIU, the nation’s largest union of health care workers, which was lobbying for legislation to curb the needle sticks that were afflicting more than 600,000 health care workers each year. Shaw ended up helping craft a California bill that required hospitals to keep a log indicating which syringes were causing needle sticks and take regular steps to transition to the safer ones. Twenty-one states later passed laws patterned after California’s, and in 2000 the federal government followed suit. That winter, Shaw traveled from Little Elm for the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, and President Bill Clinton gave him a pen he had used to sign the measure into law.<br/><br/>This bumper crop of legislation should have been a boon to Shaw’s company—after all, there was nothing else like his product on the market. BD had released its own safety syringes some years earlier. But the ECRI Institute, the Consumer Reports of the health care industry, had rated its best-selling model “unacceptable” (it was later upgraded to “not recommended”), whereas Shaw’s product received the top rating. And some medical facilities had found that, rather than drive down needle sticks, BD products caused their numbers to rise. After the federal needle safety law passed, Cook Children’s, a Fort Worth–based chain of pediatric clinics, first moved to BD safety needles. But after dropping initially, the number of needle sticks more than doubled, from nine to nineteen a year. So in 2004 Cooks began transitioning to Retractable syringes, and over the next four years the number of sticks fell to zero.<br/><br/>But Shaw’s company continued to have trouble breaking into hospitals. In mid-1999, Kaiser Permanente of California signed a one-year contract to buy Retractable syringes, which seemed like an enormous coup. But a month later, Becton Dickinson announced a “unique” three-year, $30 million deal with Kaiser nationwide. After that, Shaw struggled to get his syringes into Kaiser supply rooms—often, he says, they sat locked in warehouses or trucks in distributors’ parking lots. Kaiser spokesman Jim Anderson argues that if Shaw’s products didn’t make their way to hospitals it was because of “significant supply issues” on Retractable’s end. He also says they were prone to malfunction and that, in several cases, needles detached and were left “stuck in the arms of patients.” Whatever the reasons, Kaiser broke off the deal early.<br/><br/>Meanwhile, as Shaw was fighting his battles hospital to hospital, Becton Dickinson was working to extend its hold on the nation’s GPOs. According to confidential documents filed as part of a whistleblower lawsuit, in 1999 BD paid $1 million to Novation, the only major GPO with which it hadn’t yet signed a sole-source contract, in return for a three-year sole-source deal for syringes and needles. This payment, which it dubbed a “special marketing fee,” was on top of more than 3 percent of its sales revenue and other perks valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Becton Dickinson’s grip on hospitals was now even tighter than it had been before.<br/><br/>By this point, the struggle was starting to take its toll on Shaw. Now when he came home after long days in the office, he would shut himself in a room and not let anyone in except his children. His marriage was unraveling (he later divorced) and his increasingly confrontational style was starting to put off potential allies. When he was invited to speak at a luncheon of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association, an alliance of small medical suppliers, no one would sit near him; he ate alone, surrounded by twelve empty chairs, and was booed when he stepped to the podium. “They were afraid if we took on the GPOs they would be destroyed,” Shaw recalls. Meanwhile, Retractable Technologies’ stock had lost nearly two-thirds of its value, and its operating capital was dwindling rapidly. After weighing his options, in 2001 Shaw finally filed an antitrust suit against Becton Dickinson, Novation, and Premier.<br/><br/>Around this time, GPOs started to come under scrutiny. The New York Times ran an investigative series on their business practices in 2002, and Congress followed suit with a string of hearings. One of the first witnesses was California entrepreneur Joe Kiani, who had invented a machine to monitor blood-oxygen levels. Unlike other similar devices, Kiani’s worked even when patients moved around or had little blood flowing to their extremities, a crucial innovation for treating sickly, premature infants, who tend to squirm and need to be monitored constantly for oxygen saturation—too little and they suffocate, too much and they go blind. But most hospitals couldn’t buy Kiani’s product because his larger rival, Nellcor, had cut a deal with the GPOs.<br/><br/>Kiani’s testimony was followed by a flood of revelations about self-dealing and conflicts of interest among GPOs and their executives. Congress was also given a slew of documents showing that GPOs were collecting upfront payments of up to $3 million from suppliers, including drug makers like Astra-Zeneca, in return for awarding them sales contracts, not to mention a large share of revenues. In one case, a vendor was handing Novation not 3 percent of its revenue on a given product line, but a full 94 percent, according to Novation documents.<br/><br/>These revelations stirred a groundswell of outrage, and there was talk of legislation to rein the GPOs in. Spooked by this threat, in 2002, the industry introduced a voluntary code of conduct, which it promised would foster “a thriving, innovative and competitive healthcare marketplace,” and three years later created a body to oversee compliance. For the first time, it seemed as if these powerful middlemen might actually cede some ground.<br/><br/>By this point, Shaw appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough as well. In mid-2003, Novation, Premier, and another company offered to pay him $50 million to settle out of court and agreed to take steps to give him market access, though the specific terms remain under gag order. As the case was getting ready to go to trial the following year, Shaw received a two a.m. phone call from his lawyer saying that Becton Dickinson was prepared to offer a $100 million settlement. Shaw roused his children, and they piled in the car and drove to the local IHOP for blueberry pancakes.<br/><br/>After the settlement, Shaw started offering his retractable syringes for ten cents a piece, about what other companies were charging for their conventional hypodermics. But even this didn’t boost sales—in fact, Retractable’s sales to non-VA hospitals dropped. Shaw has since come to see the settlement as nothing more than a tool for the GPOs to keep the details of their operations under wraps. “The group purchasing organizations that were BD’s agents paid us $50 million to keep their practices from being reviewed in front of a jury,” he told me. “They took the equivalent of $10,000 from every hospital in the U.S. and gave it to a company in Little Elm, Texas. Either they’ve got minimal trust in the average juror or they’ve got something they don’t want the public to know.”<br/><br/>Shaw is not the only one who kept running into brick walls after the GPOs’ promised reforms took hold. In 2004, Garrett Bolks, a Tulsa native who had spent twenty-four years working in the medical supply business, brought the first X-ray-detectable surgical towel to market. It was a simple invention—nothing more than a strip of blue waffle-weave cloth about the size of a hand towel, with a flexible ribbon of barium sulfate tucked into one corner of the hem. But it promised to eliminate the problem of towels being accidentally left to fester inside the body after surgery, and it garnered attention in high places.<br/><br/>After learning about the product through a friend in the summer of 2004, then Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson invited Bolks out to Washington, where they discussed it over steaks at a local restaurant. Thompson liked what he heard. “It made a heck of a lot of sense to me,” Thompson recalled when I spoke to him in January. “I thought, Why hasn’t anybody thought of this before? This should be the standard in the industry.” After leaving the Bush administration the following year, Thompson agreed to sit on the company’s board and began talking up Bolks’s product in speeches. Bolks also landed a contract to sell his towels to the venerable Cleveland Clinic.<br/><br/>Nevertheless, Bolks couldn’t manage to make inroads with the GPOs, even when his X-ray-detectable towel was the only one on the market—and soon enough he had competitors. By 2006, Bolks had sunk more than $1 million of his own money into the venture, and was running out of capital. So when a Dallas-based GPO named Broadlane put out a bid for surgical towels that year, he decided to go all out. Not only did he offer his towels at pennies above cost, he also called in his connections, including Thompson, who personally put in a call to Broadlane. “I brought out as many big guns as I could,” Bolks recalls. “Because I knew this was my last chance.”<br/><br/>But even this was not enough for him to land the deal. Instead, Broadlane chose to go with ordinary, non-X-ray-detectable surgical towels from two established players, Medical Action and Medline. On its face, this choice made little sense. According to internal Broadlane documents, the quality of Bolks’s towels was on par with competitors, and his bid was nearly 20 percent lower than any other company’s X-ray-detectable products. It was also lower than the non-X-ray-detectable towels Broadlane chose. By all appearances, Broadlane went with a more expensive product that offered fewer benefits for patients.<br/><br/>Broadlane’s executive vice president for supply chain services, Michael Berryhill, said via e-mail that he could not comment on the reasons for the decision, though he emphasized that the company and its member hospitals weigh a number of factors beyond price when choosing which bids to accept, including “the reputation and reliability of each potential supplier” and “the transaction costs associated with having more suppliers on-contract compared to a lean supply chain.” But Diana Smith, a former director of surgical services at Broadlane who was privy to the selection process, sees the situation differently. “It should have been a no-brainer,” Smith told me when I met with her in Dallas. “Garrett had a good product, and it was cheaper than everybody else’s. But GPOs make their money by charging vendors fees. And if you get a percentage of sales, going with a lower bid from a little company just loses you money and pisses off the big vendors with multiple contracts.”<br/><br/>Smith, who provided the information on which bids were chosen, adds that the tricky part for GPO executives is getting member hospitals to sign off on higher-priced contracts, something she says Broadlane did by presenting the statistics in ways that, though technically accurate, were often misleading. In the case of the towel bid, hospital administrators were shown a PowerPoint presentation (a copy of which she gave to me) indicating that going with the Medline and Medical Action bids would save them between 6 and 29 percent. But this was relative to the same companies’ bids the previous year, not the bids offered by other vendors. “Our job was to bamboozle hospital CFOs and purchasing managers,” Smith explained. “My boss used to call it getting them to drink the Broadlane Kool-Aid.”<br/><br/>The Broadlane decision turned out to be the death knell for Bolks’s towel company. But he continues to come up with new devices. Last April, I visited him at his office in Tulsa, which was stuffed with crumpled cardboard boxes full of medical supplies, and he showed off his newest invention—a black handheld wand and a diode about the size of a fleck of pepper with a tiny antenna poking out from one side. He explained that the idea was to embed the diode, which gives off a special frequency, into all kinds of surgical supplies. That way, if objects are left inside patients, the wand can be used to detect them before the incision is even sown back up. “The towel was nice—at the time it was innovative,” Bolks added. “But this was the product I felt could make a major contribution.” However, his savings are too depleted to put it into production, and he has been unable to drum up outside funding. “Investors know how the system works,” he explained. “Without a GPO contract, it doesn’t matter how good your product is. Even if I could wave this wand over your body and cure you from cancer, chances are I couldn’t sell it to hospitals.”<br/><br/>Stories like these abound among small suppliers, a number of whom have filed suit against GPOs. But most are wary of speaking out. Several talked to me off the record. At least a half dozen more agreed to speak, only to back out at the last minute or retract their statements after we had spoken. “Most people who know this world wouldn’t speak to you under threat of subpoena,” one former GPO executive told me. “They are terrified.”<br/><br/>As for the GPOs and their advocates, they argue that if small companies have trouble breaking in, it has to do with the quality of their wares. “Why do small manufacturers fail?” Curtis Rooney, president of the Health Industry Group Purchasing Association, the trade organization for GPOs, asked when I met him at his Washington office. “The answer is that they don’t have a product.” He added that GPOs pick vendors through competitive bidding, which puts small companies on equal footing with their larger rivals.<br/><br/>Rooney also stressed that most GPOs adhere to the code of conduct, which he argued assures openness and competition. But while the code sets firm guidelines regarding conflicts of interest—GPO employees are barred from holding stock in companies whose contracts they are in a position to influence, for instance—when it comes to core business practices, it is vague. Rather than setting caps on kickbacks, for example, it merely directs GPOs to take steps to ensure that any financial perks don’t “encroach upon the best interests” of hospitals and clinics. Obviously, this leaves room for maneuvering. And, while the industry generally keeps its business practices under wraps, critics charge that the tactics that raised red flags in the past continue. In fact, there is evidence to this effect. Some GPOs admit in their limited public disclosures to collecting “fees” of 25 percent or more of vendors’ sales. Others continue to pursue aggressive bundling programs—the GPO MedAssets now bundles together everything from sutures and bedpans to blood-oxygen monitors and cafeteria services (although hospitals have a certain number of opt-outs).<br/><br/>In some cases, GPOs have backed away from their old practices only to revive them in modified form. After the last congressional probe, Premier introduced its own stringent code of conduct and began signing contracts with multiple suppliers for most products nationwide. But it has since begun working with regional hospital groups to forge deals that drive sales to a few preferred vendors. Through a recently launched program called ASCEND—a program the company’s president, Mike Alkire, has called “the future model of Premier”—it has also begun locking individual hospitals into sole-source agreements for a wide variety of products. What’s more, Premier’s code explicitly bars it from pursuing sole-source deals and bundling for what are known as “physician preference items,” meaning those that are seen by doctors as affecting the quality of patient care. But during Premier’s official quarterly conference call for suppliers last February, ASCEND’s director, Andy Brailo, suggested that, while hospitals are not required to sign restrictive deals for physician-preference products, the company is taking steps to persuade them to do so. He added that Premier is “investigating things even down to profit sharing with the physicians.” (Premier maintains that either Brailo misspoke or his words were taken out of context, and that the company “does not include physician preference items in the commitment associated to the ASCEND program” or “engage in profit sharing programs of any type with physicians.”)<br/><br/>Prakash Sethi, president of the International Center for Corporate Accountability at Baruch College and author of a recently published book on GPOs, argues that if the industry hasn’t transformed itself, that’s because the pay-for-play system remains intact. “It’s a gravy train,” he explains. “Why should they get off it? We can’t even begin to talk seriously about GPO reform until we realign the financial incentives so that hospitals, not vendors, are their main clients.”<br/><br/>The multibillion-dollar question is what this incentive system means for health care costs. GPOs maintain that by pooling hospitals’ buying power and getting big medical suppliers to submit to competitive bidding, they are able to negotiate better deals and save hospitals billions of dollars. If this weren’t the case, Blair Childs, Premier’s senior vice president for public affairs, argues there would be no reason for hospitals to join. “They wouldn’t use our contracts if they weren’t competitive,” he told me. “Many of these hospitals have tiny margins. They’ve got to get better products, better prices, better value.”<br/><br/>Industry-funded studies support these cost-saving claims. In fact, one recent study found that GPOs save hospitals as much as $36 billion a year. The problem is that, rather than hard numerical data, this figure is based on surveys of hospital administrators. And while survey takers weren’t asked what yardstick they used to measure savings, the study’s author, Arizona State University professor Eugene Schneller, says that hospitals generally base their figures on the discounts they get off GPO list prices, often in return for agreeing to buy from select suppliers. Obviously, this is a far less meaningful benchmark than what they would pay for the same supplies if they negotiated prices on their own. But, then, most hospitals don’t appear to have that information. An earlier survey of hospital purchasing managers by supply chain expert Lynn James Everard found that most of the managers who claim to know what they are saving through their GPOs know only what their GPOs report to them.<br/><br/>The idea of hospitals outsourcing oversight of their supply budgets may seem hard to fathom. But the price of medical supplies is not always transparent. Makers of the costliest devices and equipment tend to be secretive about pricing and generally require buyers to sign gag clauses promising not to disclose what they’ve paid, which makes it difficult for hospitals to comparison shop. (In fact, this is one reason GPOs maintain their services are necessary.) Also, many larger hospitals hold stakes in GPOs, and even smaller ones have less incentive than outsiders might think to pour over cost reports, since insurance companies and government programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, are picking up the tab for much of their supplies and equipment.<br/><br/>As for independent assessment of GPOs’ effect on costs, they are hard to come by. But the little information that is available suggests that they may actually drive up the price of supplies. A 2002 pilot study by the Government Accountability Office found, for instance, that hospitals that went through GPOs paid more for safety needles and most models of pacemakers than those that negotiated prices on their own—for some pacemakers the median gap was as wide as 39 percent.<br/><br/>Even more unsettling are the findings of MEMdata, a Texas-based company that helps hospitals process their bids for new equipment and captures the quotes in a database, so that administrators can compare the prices they are offered to what others have paid. Shortly after the company opened for business, founder Bob Yancy says he discovered that bids hospitals got through their GPO contracts were substantially higher than the ones he or medical centers that weren’t locked into GPO pricing could get by negotiating directly with vendors for the same equipment. Yancy later had his staff add a field to their database to track just how GPO bids stacked up. Over the last seven years, his company, which serves more than 500 medical facilities, has collected tens of thousands of bids. On average, Yancy says, the GPOs’ prices are 22 percent higher than the ones that hospitals can get on their own. “The bottom line is that hospitals are being systematically overcharged,” he told me, when I met him at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. “GPOs are inflating the pricing.”<br/><br/>To back up these claims, Yancy sent me more than three dozen paired bids, including two quotes for a suite of endoscopy equipment from the same vendor that were issued on the same day. The specs were identical, from the cameras down to the fiber-optic cables. But one had “aggressive pricing” scrawled across the top and came out to $83,000, while the other had the name of a large GPO above the header (Yancy asked that the name and other sensitive details be withheld to protect his business contacts), and was priced at $131,000—or nearly $50,000 more for the same equipment. In other cases, the picture was less clear; there were modest variations between the specs of the two bids, for instance. But the overall pattern was unmistakable.<br/><br/>The experience of hospitals and clinics that have struck out on their own seems to confirm Yancy’s findings. When Iowa Health System, a chain of ten Midwest hospitals, cut ties with Premier some years ago, it immediately shaved $7 million a year off its supply costs, a savings of more than 12 percent, according to the New York Times. Similarly, in 2005 a chain of community clinics affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, began going outside its Novation contract to buy chemotherapy drugs and managed to save $800,000 a year.<br/><br/>And yet, despite all the talk about “bending the cost curve down” in the runup to health care reform, GPOs barely entered the conversation. Critics of the system find this baffling, especially since most believe that if GPOs are driving up prices, the problem could be fixed by simply getting rid of the anti-kickback protections. Nevertheless, lawmakers appear to have limited appetite for taking the issue on. Last August, Congress launched an investigation into GPO contracting practices, and the Government Accountability Office followed suit. But Senate staffers now say that hearings on the subject are unlikely to be held this year, and may not be held at all.<br/><br/>Part of the reason interest has waned seems to be that those who know enough about the system to care aren’t eager to change it. “Hospitals are a big constituency in every district,” explains one senior Senate staffer involved in the ongoing GPO investigation. “And hospitals support GPOs. Reform, on the other hand, doesn’t really have a lobby, which can make it difficult to take action.”<br/><br/>For Shaw this unsolvable riddle has become a kind of obsession. He turns it over and over in his head like an engineering problem, as if the fix might come to him if he just looks at it from enough different angles. Perhaps the part he finds most perplexing is that it was largely government grants that paid for him to develop his retractable syringe. “I’ve spent twenty years fighting to return my obligation to the American taxpayer and to a government that turns its head from its responsibility to protect the free market,” he says. “The taxpayers got screwed out of the technology they paid for.”<br/><br/>Even today, Shaw continues to develop new products. In fact, he has brought five of them onto the market in the last two years, including the IV catheter syringe. But his efforts remain consumed largely by the struggle for access. Among other things, he has hired a lobbyist to agitate for the repeal of the anti-kickback exemption and filed a stack of lawsuits, including a second antitrust suit against Becton Dickinson. All this struggle has brought a few scattered victories—most recently last November, when a jury found that BD had used Shaw’s patented technology for its own retractable syringe and ordered the company to pay Retractable another $5 million. (The case is on appeal.) But Shaw still isn’t any closer to breaking into the hospital market, and in the meantime the life on his patents is dwindling. In just four years, the first of them will expire and the game will be over.<br/><br/>This isn’t just bad news for Shaw. Because his company is in the red, he has been unable to pull together the financing he needs to expand his factory in Little Elm. So he has partnered with Chinese companies, which put up money to build assembly lines in China in return for permission to produce his syringes for the Chinese market. When his patents do run out, the Chinese manufacturers will be the ones poised to bring his technology to the world market, meaning all the jobs and economic benefits that could have gone to the local residents will instead go to the people of Gansu Province.<br/><br/>The senselessness of this quandary has driven Shaw to distraction. “We are devoting our entire lives to something we know is going to fail,” he told me during my final visit to his office. “If we expected anything else, it would be devastating. If somebody’s holding you under water and they let you up and you think you’re going to escape, you’re going to go insane.” He was in one of those moods where he paces about, his mind flitting from outrage to outrage so quickly that it can be hard to follow the flow, much less stop it. As I got up to leave, he trailed me down the stairs and out to the parking lot, where he stood amid the gravel and grit in his socks. Even as I backed my car out of the lot, he was still talking. The question is whether anyone out there is listening. <br/><br/>=========================================================