Pharmacy Purchasing & Products’ 14th annual State of Pharmacy Compounding examines the status of compounding practices nationwide, the impact of the pandemic on those practices, and projections for practice changes that will occur over the next few years.

A total of 360 survey responses were received via email, yielding a confidence interval of 5.00% (95%, +/-5.00). We purposely survey a random sampling of pharmacy directors to ensure the data herein reflects trends across the entirety of health system practices.

Survey respondents reflect the cross section of health system facility sizes.

Over the next 3 years, growth will be the norm for in-house compounding operations. This holds particularly true for facilities with more than 200 beds; 64% of these mid- to large-size facilities are projecting that their compounding volumes will increase.

Daily compounding volumes vary widely depending on the number of patients served. While the smallest facilities typically compound fewer than 50 preparations per day, the largest facilities commonly prepare more than 10 times that amount.

The largest facilities continue to increase the number of FTEs involved in compounding, while staffing rates for small and mid-sized facilities remained static this year.

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