Outsourcing inpatient i.v. compounding: expense and medication error implications

A quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate differences in intravenous (i.v.) drug compounding costs and frequency of medication administration errors of omission before and after outsourcing the hospital's i.v. admixture refill program to an alternate site home i.v. infusion pharmacy. As part of the outsourcing changes, the pharmacy redeployed an i.v. admixture technician to do i.v. recycling on the nursing units. The study was a single subject, pretest, posttest (within subjects) design using an observer. The independent variables were outsourcing and having an i.v. recycling technician. The dependent variables were medication errors of omission and costs directly associated with the two i.v. programs. A statistically significant reduction in the frequency of medication administration errors of omission was associated with implementation of the outsourcing program. In addition, first year expenses were reduced by an estimated $86,356.