Minimizing i.v. admixture waste in a 70-bed hospital.

The Pharmacy Department, concerned with the excessive number of IV medication doses wasted, developed a two-phase plan to deal with the problem. The first phase evaluated the daily cost of having a technician manually look through the nursing Medication Administration Records (MARs) for changes in IV orders, rather than depending upon the ward clerk to send them to the pharmacy. Then that amount was compared to the cost savings derived from not making, and wasting, discontinued medications. The second phase determined the cost savings obtained by recycling IV medications to a different patient if the primary patient no longer required the medication. The annual estimated savings from these two changes was $8,044.00.