What is Compounding?

Pharmacy Compounding is…

…the long-established tradition in pharmacy practices that enables physicians to prescribe, and patients to take medicines that are specially prepared by pharmacists to meet patients’ individual needs.

Compounded Medicines are a Vital Part of

Quality Medical Care

A growing number of patients have unique health needs that off-the-shelf prescription medicines cannot meet. For them, customized, compounded medications prescribed or ordered by licensed physicians and mixed safely by trained, licensed compounding pharmacists are the only way to better health.

Compounding is an even greater option for treating illness because of the relatively narrow  selection of medicines that are manufactured by pharmaceutical companies.

Pharmacists are the only health care professionals that have studied medicine compatibilities and can prepare alternate forms. In fact, each state requires that pharmacy schools must, as part of their core curriculum, instruct students on the compounding of pharmaceutical ingredients. ​

The basis of the profession of pharmacy has always been the “triad,” the patient-physician-pharmacist relationship. Through this relationship, patient needs are determined by a physician, who diagnoses a treatment plan that may include a compounded medication.
Physicians often prescribe compounded medications for reasons that include (but are are limited to) the following situations:
• When needed medications are discontinued by or generally unavailable from pharmaceutical companies, often because the medications are no longer profitable to manufacture;
• When the patient is allergic to certain preservatives, dyes or binders in available off-the shelf medications;
• When treatment requires tailored dosage strengths for patients with unique needs (for example, an infant);
• When a pharmacist can combine several medications the patient is taking to increase compliance;
• When the patient cannot ingest the medication in its commercially available form and a pharmacist can easily change the medication to a cream, liquid or other form that the patient can easily take;

Also, compounding is extremely important to the veterinary physician, which often requires more flavors, dosages and potency levels than commercially available medications supply.