Distributing Scarce Drugs for the Medpin Program

Jayashankar M. Swaminathan (), Marice Ashe (), Kathryn Duke (), Liz Maslin () and Leon Wilde ()
Additional contact information
Jayashankar M. Swaminathan: Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3490
Marice Ashe: Medpin Program, Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, California 94607
Kathryn Duke: Medpin Program, Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, California 94607
Liz Maslin: Medpin Program, Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, California 94607
Leon Wilde: Medpin Program, Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, California 94607

Interfaces, 2004, vol. 34, issue 5, 353-358

Abstract: In the 1999 settlement of a lawsuit by the state of California, 19 pharmaceutical firms were required to provide $150 million worth of drugs free of charge to 200 California clinics and hospitals over three years. The Public Health Institute (www.phi.org), an independent, nonprofit organization, was responsible for distributing these drugs in a fair and equitable manner. In 2001, six more firms and $20 million dollars were added to the project. The decision-support system for the drug distribution project (DDP) used management science and operations research concepts to distribute drugs in a timely and fair manner, taking into account various clinic, pharmaceutical, and allocation constraints. Many uninsured patients who would otherwise have had difficult or no access to medication have received their prescribed drugs and sustained their health. Although an accurate count of the patients affected is not available yet, we estimate that 2.6 million, 30-day drug prescriptions were filled as part of DDP between April 2000 and February 2003. Further, many pharmaceutical firms are exploring using the DDP's decision-support system to improve operation of their charitable drug programs.

Keywords: health care; pharmaceuticals; decision analysis; systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1040.0095 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:34:y:2004:i:5:p:353-358

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().