United States healthcare industry

Pharmacopoeia publications provide a final important source of information for the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory authorities, and the healthcare professions. These are concerned with establishing quality standards. These publications include monographs that define specifications for the purity and identity of established pharmaceutical ingredients, both active and non-active, together with recognised analytical methods that may be used to evaluate them. The most relevant are the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) and the European Pharmacopoeia (Ph.Eur). 

In a recent seminar, a medical expert noted that the United States has given away economic and technical dominance in industry after industry to other countries. Healthcare research is one of the few areas in which the U.S. enjoys unparalleled leadership which has enormous impact on the quality of medical care. If the healthcare industry and the academic medical enterprise falters—and this is in danger right now—I think it will be an absolute disaster for this country [40]. Many in pharmacy, medicine, and other healthcare fields would concur with the above statement. The problem is that many others in the public sector do not fully appreciate what is at stake. Pharmacists have an opportunity to help tell the story, as difficult as it sometimes is to convey. 

The President s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Healthcare Industry. In Quality First Better Healthcare for All Americans. Final Report to the President of the United States U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, DC, March 1998 (GPO 017-012-00396-6). 

Since the early 1980s, there has been a more than fivefold increase in the number of Americans enrolled in HMOs, which has had a dramatic impact on the delivery of healthcare in the United States. As a result of this trend, HMOs realized the need to demonstrate the quality of care they provided to their members compared with fee-for-service health plans however, at the time the industry lacked established standards. Subsequently, various independent review processes evolved, which often did not have consistent assumptions about the parameters that defined quality. It was not until the late 1980s that a group of HMO industry leaders recognized that an organization called the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) had the potential to act as an independent authority on quality control in managed care. ... 

Hempel, W., Sziraczky, G., Swahn, L., and Takacs, L. 2008. Analytical Paper Biomarkers Impact on Biomedical Research and Healthcare Case Reports Directorate for Science and Technology and Industry Committee for Science and Technological Policy. Biosystem International, Evry, France and Armus Corporation, California, United States, http //www.oecd.org/datao-ecd/48/3/41892771.pdf. 

---