Federal and state regulations on the provision of health care are largely intended to ensure patients receive safe, high-quality care. As pharmacists know well, health systems, hospitals, and post-acute care (PAC) providers (eg, long-term care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies), are faced with maintaining compliance to a growing number ... read more

Improving transitions of care is a goal of intense interest in hospital pharmacy practice. However, at the present time, there is no gold standard for how pharmacists should approach these critical interactions and offer interventions. When effective transitions of care services are provided to patients—for example, medication reconciliation—patient outcomes may improve and hospital readmissions ... read more

Q&A with Lee Murdaugh, BS Pharm, PhDDirector of Accreditation and Medication Safety Cardinal Health Innovative Delivery Solutions Pharmacy Purchasing & Products: What policies and procedures (P&Ps) should be in place for cleaning engineering controls? Lee Murdaugh, BS Pharm, PhD: P&Ps for cleaning engineering controls in sterile compounding areas must include procedures for ... read more

According to the US Federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is a Schedule I illegal drug, which signifies it has no medical use and may lead to abuse.1 Despite this fact, the majority of states have passed laws to legalize or decriminalize its use for medical indications. Thirty states allow for the sale of marijuana for medical reasons, with nine of those states and the District of Columbia ... read more

Within health systems, drugs are supplied in myriad forms requiring varying degrees of manipulation for proper patient administration. For its part, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) indicates in their safe practice guidelines that to the maximum extent possible, commercially prepared, premixed parenteral products and unit dose syringes are to be used versus manually compounded ... read more