Allegheny General Hospital saves $1.2 million with IV robotics

The organization's pharmacy director offers an in-depth look at this technology that has become crucial to the hospital.

For a very long time, hospital pharmacies have relied on 503B Compounding facilities to outsource to or from which to purchase a variety of supplies, such as ready-to-use critical care drips, OR syringes and high-use medications.

THE PROBLEM

The problem is, the supply of medications from these 503B facilities is not reliable, and shortages make it challenging to maintain the demand required for proper patient care, said Arpit Mehta, PharmD, director of pharmacy at Allegheny General Hospital, a 650-bed academic medical center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Mehta says he has seen situations where 503B facilities reduce or outright stop the allocation of medications without advanced notice, making the mitigation of the shortages quite challenging.

"Ensuring the product is truly safe and sterile for our patients is another aspect for 503B facilities. We have to ensure the facilities are safe to use," he explained. "This requires review of the FDA inspection reports, QA data, site-visits, etc. – all of which requires time and effort. With shortages, health system pharmacies generally partner with multiple 503B facilities, requiring thorough review of all such partner facilities. And even then, there still can be problems.