Hospital pharmacies vary from any other type of pharmacy on a lot of counts. A hospital pharmacy, as the name suggests, would be affiliated with some hospital. Some hospital pharmacies deal with multiple hospitals and often have a large inventory of medicines and drugs to ensure that the drug supply to the hospitals never falls short.
The major challenge for hospital pharmacies is to meet the need of the hospitals in terms of providing drugs and medicines. With no lag time provided to these pharmacies to provide the drug, there is very little option but to stock up the inventory in a big way.
Normally, these pharmacies can be found in the campus of a hospital, while some hospital pharmacies exists standalone but have some kind of a business tie-in with the hospital. They stock a larger range of medicines and drugs. Most importantly, they even sell drugs and medicines that haven’t yet been FDA approved. They have some medicines which are still being studied for their use and effects.
The feasibility of a hospital pharmacy in a community setting is often debated. Bar the medicines, drugs and larger than normal inventory, a hospital pharmacy has the same business model as a community pharmacy. The difference lies in the kind of medicines provided by these pharmacies, as you may not be able to find them in a community pharmacy.
Retail pharmacies could run close to hospital pharmacies in the way how they work, but they cannot be called hospital pharmacies. For example, hospital pharmacies wouldn’t sell drugs and medicines to individuals and would directly supply them to the hospital authorities or the doctor. A retail pharmacy is associated with the hospital, but also sells OTC (over the counter) drugs.
Finally, a hospital pharmacy would also store emergency intravenous and life-saving capsules, which could be demanded by the doctor at any point of time.
Every hospital should have a hospital pharmacy on or near their premises. There is no reason to be surprised as to why they need hospital pharmacists at all times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital_pharmacy
www.thomasland.com/hospitalpharmacy.html
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