R.J. Hedges Podcast RJ Hedges

Learn what a registrant is, why you should have certificant or coordinator, the 2 types of power of attorneys your pharmacy should have, and what forms you’ll need to complete to get these items in place from this recent podcast

"Partnership Series" and try a few times each year to help spotlight one of these businesses.  In the past we've done live webinars that people sign up for, then on-demand webinars

Whether you’ve worked your whole career building your business, inherited or purchased from family, or more recently acquired the business, at some point, all owners start to think about the next chapters of their life and selling their business.  The world of pharmacy isn’t much different from other businesses in this sense, and it can be hard for an entrepreneur, visionary, and owner to start forecasting life without the business they’ve given so much of their time, energy, focus, and money.

There was a lot of movement going into the implementation date, and folks were trying to figure out exactly how would impact their specific facility.

Today's Pharmacy Compliance Guide is the second part of our series on preparing for USP Hazardous Drugs (HD). In our last podcast, titled: “How will USP Impact My Retail and LTC Pharmacy?” we addressed what each pharmacy must do to prepare for implementation of these guidelines. We covered these topics:


How to identify hazardous drugs through the NIOSH List
Segregating hazardous drugs from regular stock
Proper handling of hazardous drugs
When pill scanners and robots are permitted to be used
Special handing of hazardous drugs that require alterations
Determining Personal Protective Equipment by using Safety Data Sheets
Which agencies will enforce these guidelines?

USP-800 was designed to address the proper handling of hazardous drugs (HDs) in a pharmacy setting. Its guidelines are plainly aimed at promoting patient and worker safety in and around non-sterile and sterile compounding. The first section clearly covers compounding in its purest form.

However, when you move into section two, you quickly realize the dispensing of pills, capsules, liquids and manufactured packaged items are also covered by USP-800 Different types of terms are being used to describe types of hazardous drugs, such as antineoplastic, non-antineoplastic, reproductive risk only; dosage form, risk of exposure, packaging, and manipulation. This may sound like a whole lot of mumbo jumbo, but it is the new language of hazardous drugs.