Distributing scarce drugs for the Medpin program

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.