FDA Officials Tackle Perceptions of Drug Quality

A majority of consumers and physicians believe generic drugs are inferior in quality to branded products, FDA officials said at a National Press Club event.

In addition, nearly three-quarters of consumers and half of doctors felt that drugs manufactured abroad are not held to the same standards as those manufactured domestically.

The FDA presented these finding at a meeting it hosted in collaboration with the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy. Office of Pharmaceutical Quality (OPQ) officials presented the results of two agency surveys in collaboration with WebMD in 2018 on consumer and physician knowledge of drug quality.  The surveys found that more than half of both groups believed that branded drugs are higher quality than generics.

FDA Chief of Staff Keagan Lenihan noted that quality issues account for nearly 60 percent of drug shortages.