Chemo drug testimony

A representative from “med-buy” — a consortium of healthcare providers testified at queen’s park today — as mpp’s are still trying to figure out how hundreds of patients at four ontario hospitals received lower doses of chemo medication than they were prescribed…

Last week Marchese’s President Marita Zaffiro told the committee that her company mixed the drugs according to the contract it had with Medbuy. She said Marchese thought each bag would be used for one patient — so it didn’t matter how much saline would be watering down the medication. Zaffiro said the hospitals mis-interpreted the labels on the drug bags — saying Marchese believed the labels were supposed to reflect a non-specific concentration of drug on the bag. But Monday, the Medbuy rep said a qualified pharmacist would know that a label has to accurately and exactly describe the contents of a bag of medicine. And that the last company that had the contract was given the same instructions as Marchese. But they had no problem interpreting them…