Drug Rankings
Drugs ranked by cost, safety signals, recalls, and shortages. All data from FDA, FAERS, and NADAC sources.
What These Rankings Show
PlainMeds tracks 6 ranking views derived from 682 prescription drugs, 3,720 FAERS adverse-event reports, 1,000 FDA enforcement recalls, and 1,679 active and resolved drug shortages. Cost-of-care leaderboards use CMS NADAC per-unit acquisition pricing — the actual price pharmacies pay before markup — across 23,166 monthly pricing records. Safety leaderboards aggregate FDA Adverse Event Reporting System volumes for total reports, death-associated reports, and hospitalization reports separately, so a drug high on report-volume need not be high on serious-outcome volume.
Ranking caveats: FAERS is a passive surveillance system, so widely-prescribed drugs accumulate reports faster than rarely-prescribed ones; rankings should be read as signal-detection indicators for further investigation, not per-patient risk scores. Recall rankings reflect manufacturer-batch enforcement actions, not aggregate severity. Shortage durations include both manufacturing-quality and active-ingredient supply causes, and a drug appearing on multiple lists (cost + recalls + shortages) usually points to concentrated-supplier or single-source manufacturing fragility rather than a single safety story. See the full methodology & limitations page for ranking logic and data vintage.
Most Expensive Drugs
Drugs with the highest NADAC cost per unit — the priciest medications on the market.
Most Adverse Event Reports
Drugs with the most FDA adverse event reports filed through FAERS.
Most Recalled Drugs
Drugs with the highest number of FDA recall actions.
Most Death-Associated Reports
Drugs with the most FAERS reports where death was a reported outcome.
Most Hospitalization Reports
Drugs with the most FAERS reports involving hospitalization.
Longest Active Drug Shortages
Currently shorted drugs ranked by how long the shortage has persisted.
Related Sections
Rankings Methodology
Rankings pull from federal data sources: CMS NADAC pricing for cost leaderboards, FDA FAERS for adverse-event volume, death-associated reports, and hospitalizations, FDA Enforcement Reports for recall counts, and FDA Drug Shortages Database for shortage duration. Raw counts reflect exposure volume and reporting practices — they are signal-detection indicators, not per-patient risk measures. See full methodology for ranking logic, limitations, and data vintage.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — FAERS + recalls + NADAC openFDA aggregated drug data: FAERS, recalls, NADAC pricing, drug shortages · 2024 Rankings derived from FDA openFDA APIs across FAERS adverse events, drug recall enforcement reports, NADAC pricing, and drug shortages list.