With recent reports of price-gouging for live-saving drugs, officials in half of America’s hospitals have admitted they’ve bought medications from back-door suppliers, MSNBC is reporting. Fifty-two percent of the hospital purchasing agents and pharmacists questioned at the 549 hospitals surveyed by the advocacy group The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) reported that they’ve bought drugs from so-called “gray market” vendors during the past two years.

Grey-market suppliers operate outside official channels. They often buy drugs from uncertain sources and resell them at a steep profit. The transactions are fueled by desperate patients and demanding doctors, who makie hospital employees feel like they have to buy the back-door drugs.

More than half of the survey’s respondents, approximately 56 percent, said they receive solicitations from up to 10 gray market vendors daily, with phone, e-mail and fax requests. About one-third of respondents who had purchased the drugs at critical access and community hospitals said they had paid at least 10 times the contract price for the medicine.

The survey comes amid the worst drug shortage in American history, as last year, 211 vital drugs were reported in short supply. One hundred eighty shortages have been reported for this year, and that number is expected to double by the end of 2011. Most of the drug shortages are cancer and sedation drugs.

The ISMP is calling for aggressive reforms to address the gray-market drug problems. It’s asking for greater authority for the FDA to address the problem, as well as stricter control of illegal activities.

Written by: Karen Benardello