Public Higher Education Bulletin

The concentrations and container sizes of the medications purchased from PharMEDium are the ones that have been requested by our medical staff that will provide optimal benefit and safety to the patients to which they are administered. Many of the medications obtained from PharMEDium are classified as high risk medications so it is important to have the most appropriate container sizes and concentrations.The products purchased from PharMEDium are not commercially available from pharmaceutical manufacturers. In other words, the drug ordering software program, McKesson Connect, allows us to see what products are available commercially. If a product is commercially available and is needed, we will purchase it. With the new legislation, compounding companies are actually prohibited from making duplicates of commercially available medications unless there is a drug shortage of the commercially available product in question.

The beyond use dating that PharMEDium is able to give the products that we purchase is significantly longer than the dating we can assign if prepared in-house (3 to 7 days vs. 30 to 60 days). This significantly reduces wastage associated with the products in question. Further, the labeling provided by PharMEDium on the products that we purchase, especially the labeling on the anesthesia-related syringes, is far superior than what we can do internally. This reduces the potential for syringe swap by anesthesia in the operating room, which is an issue that is reported in the literature and one which usually ends up hurting patients if it occurs.

The University has determined that this purchase is only economically available from this source because the medications are not commercially available and can only be purchased from the pharmaceutical manufacturer.