Why choose Atlantic Pharmacy?

Compounding is often said to be the “birth-right” of any licensed pharmacist, and in the eyes of most states’ Boards of Pharmacy, that is true. Any pharmacist may legally compound a prescription for a patient pursuant to a valid prescription from a prescriber. However, compounding skills are not equal among pharmacists. Like in any field, pharmacists develop their skills and specialize practices, so you should be sure that your pharmacist is focused on compounding.

Here are some important considerations when choosing a compounding pharmacist
 
Training: pharmacy schools place very different emphasis on teaching their Future Pharmacists how to compound. In fact, a number of pharmacy schools do not even have a laboratory facility, so their students never practice this artful science before they graduate.

Licensure exams: vary by state, and all but a handful of states have eliminated the compounding portion of their licensure exams. This explain the decrease in teaching compounding in pharmacy schools, but also eliminates any standards of basic competence in compounding for state licensure.

Equipment: since not every pharmacy performs compounding, state pharmacy laws only require any pharmacy to keep the most basic (and often outdated) equipment on-hand. Having such antiquated equipment in the pharmacy simply meets the legal requirement, but does not imply that it can be used appropriately and accurately, nor that it is the best equipment for the task.

Quality Control and Assurance: most state pharmacy laws do not require pharmacies to test their non-sterile compounded preparations for potency to determine how accurately the dose of the compounded medication matches the prescribed dose. The facility should have rigorous quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) programs that include such potency tests, as well as procedures to identify and remedy any errors.