Raleigh is home to all kinds of businesses that play a significant role in our economy. Many often go unnoticed but have an outsized impact on our lives. One of those businesses is CCL Healthcare. Our printing facility just off Highway 87 currently employs 55 people who work every day to ensure the medications you take have printed information with instructions for their use, potential side effects, and more.
Congressman Wiley Nickel (D-NC) recently visited our printing facility to see what’s at stake for local workers and the medication information we provide. He witnessed an industry trying to keep patients safe and healthy but facing serious regulatory headwinds from the federal government that would jeopardize your medication information. We need the help of Nickel and the rest of North Carolina’s congressional delegation to protect medication information so CCL can continue to provide critical services and employ local families.
CCL Healthcare prints the labels required for various healthcare products, including the highly regulated pharmaceutical adhesive labels for medications, medical devices, and more. Every time you pick up a prescription, the instructions that it comes with started in our facility or one like it. We know a human is being connected to every label we print. We serve seniors who double-check the medication label to ensure they’re taking it at the right time. We serve caregivers who may be administering prescriptions for more than one patient and trying to keep them all straight. I am proud to serve as the vice president and general manager of CCL Label Healthcare because our work keeps people healthy.
We are committed to this work and to North Carolina. CCL Label is investing another $35 million to build a new facility just outside of Raleigh set to open in just a few months, and it will employ more than 150 North Carolinians dedicated to printing essential health information. However, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering undoing all of our important work to protect patients and keep them informed. Given our medical and economic footprint, we at CCL are urging lawmakers to protect our industry and workers from the FDA regulation’s existential threat.
The agency recently proposed a rule that would push Patient Medication Information (PMI), the information about a drug’s instructions and potential side effects dispensed with prescriptions at the pharmacy, to a digital-only format. In addition, the rule would force pharmacies, not drug manufacturers, to print PMI for patients with the wherewithal to ask. That would impose 71 million additional working hours and over $1.5 billion on pharmacies annually. It would jeopardize our industry and put hard-working North Carolinians, either at the printing facility or community pharmacies, out of work.
Most crucially, the rule would strip printed PMI from the hands of patients who need it. Rural, low-income, and older patients without access to broadband, smartphones, or tech skills may not be able to take their medications correctly if they can’t access PMI. Printed medication information remains essential given the prevalence of medication non-adherence, which leads to 120,000 deaths every single year and costs the healthcare system nearly $300 million. If enacted, the FDA’s proposed rule would endanger North Carolina’s most vulnerable.
The North Carolina congressional delegation must support HR 1173, the Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act. This legislation would guarantee that every patient receives clear, printed, FDA-approved medication information provided by drug manufacturers. That way, CCL can continue investing millions of dollars in North Carolina, patients can stay informed and healthy, and pharmacists can continue doing their job. Now we need Congress to pass the Patients’ Right to Know Their Medication Act.