The Food and Drug Administration unveiled a proposal Friday that would have hospitals subscribe to medicines needed to treat bacteria instead of paying for them individually or in bulk.
Under the plan, hospitals would pay a flat rate for access to a certain number of doses for an antibiotic, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.
The move is aimed at encouraging drug companies to develop better antibiotics. FDA is trying to tackle the lack of incentives for drug companies to create medicines by creating a more stable stream of funding from hospitals back to the companies.
[Also read: Medicare could have saved nearly $1 billion by using generics, study finds]
Fighting antibiotic resistance depends on more careful use of antibiotics, meaning that drug companies tend to feel they don’t get a return on their investment when they are used sparingly.
The bacteria often are colloquially referred to as “superbugs” and occur when someone has repeated exposure to antibiotics. A bacteria then mutates or takes on new genes, making an antibiotic unable to kill it or inhibit its growth. If people don’t die after an infection they can instead face long hospital stays or become disabled.
“Large pharmaceutical companies have, for the most part, exited from antibiotic research,” Gottlieb said at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington. “And while some small, venture-backed, start-up companies remain engaged, these companies are not as well positioned to fund the larger confirmatory trials required for regulatory approval. What we’d like to see is a balanced level of investment, and more interest in these opportunities. We’d like to see a more robust market for these products, complemented by a robust pipeline.”
The plan Gottlieb unveiled includes developing drugs to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria, encouraging healthcare groups and businesses to be more judicious in how they prescribe antibiotics, tracking where outbreaks occur, and looking at alternative treatments.
At least 2 million people develop drug-resistant infections and 23,000 people die from them every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The issue also was a priority for the Obama administration, and Gottlieb called it a “global public health threat.”
