For almost a year, I’ve been working as a ‘Pharmacy Project Manager’ on a large healthcare system project to bring all their pharmacy sterile compounding spaces — a.k.a. Cleanrooms, SCA’s, C-SCA’s, etc. — into compliance with USP General Chapters <797> and <800>. Some areas have been remodeled while others have simply been scrapped in favor… Read More »
I’m sure you’re all familiar with USP <797> requirements for ceilings, wall, and floors in a pharmacy cleanroom, a.k.a. IV room. According to the current chapter: The surfaces of ceilings, walls, floors, fixtures, shelving, counters, and cabinets in the buffer area shall be smooth, impervious, free from cracks and crevices, and nonshedding, thereby promoting cleanability and… Read More »
Construction on pharmacy cleanrooms is at an all-time high in California. Every hospital I know is either renovating a sterile compounding area — cleanroom or SCA — or building a new one. Why? Because of USP General Chapter <800>, of course. Never have I seen so little cost so much. That little 19-page document has… Read More »
I love pharmacy IV room workflow and technology, but I don’t get to talk about it much anymore. Most of my conversations these days are focused on IV room regulation, i.e. compliance with USP <797>/<800> and Board of Pharmacy rules. So you can imagine my surprise when two people approached me on two completely different… Read More »
In a notice posted last Friday, USP announced its intention to postpone the official date of USP Chapter <800> — Hazardous Drugs — Handling in Healthcare Settings. According to the notice: “The intent of this postponement is to align the official date of General Chapter <800> with the official date of the next revision of… Read More »
Several years ago there was a debate over the long-time practice of having pharmacists review all medication orders prior to administration; referred to as nearly universal prospective order review (NUPOR).(1) At the heart of the debate was whether or not such a process was still relevant in the changing face of healthcare, i.e. do pharmacist… Read More »
FierceHealthcare: “That’s what led them to invest in a new platform that went beyond algorithms and software to emphasize the data’s tangible impact on clinician workflow and hospital operations… Although Sutter Health has worked with the company [Qventus] on several other initiatives targeting patient throughput, the pharmacy pilot is the system’s first significant foray into… Read More »
This is follow-up commentary to an article I Tweeted about earlier this week. JCP: “[Express Scripts] found that patients who were adherent to oral diabetes drugs had 235 fewer emergency department visits and 50 fewer inpatient hospitalizations per 1000 patients, resulting in an average of $500 saved per patients and a total decrease of $210… Read More »
I am currently reading an article on the use of gravimetrics in the preparation of hazardous CSPs published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics.* The article addresses data collected from a large-scale, retrospective analysis of medication errors identified during the preparation of antineoplastic drugs, aka chemotherapy. The paper looks at 759 060 doses… Read More »
Summary: if you’re preparing compounded sterile preparations (CSPs) in a pharmacy IV room, you should be using gravimetric analysis to determine the appropriate dose/volume. Pharmacy practice is easy. Our job is to provide the right drug, at the right dose, to the right patient in the safest, most efficient, cost-effective manner possible. Simple. Currently, the… Read More »