The following minimum standard guidelines are intended to serve as a basic guide for the provision of pharmacy services in hospitals. These guidelines outline a minimum level of services that most hospital pharmacy departments should consistently provide. The reader is strongly encouraged to review the American Society of Health-System Pharmacy (ASHP) guidance documents referenced throughout these guidelines for more detailed descriptions. Certain elements of these guidelines may be applicable to other health care settings or may be useful in evaluating the scope and quality of pharmacy services.
The mission of pharmacists is to help people make the best use of medications. 1 Therefore, pharmacists shall be concerned with not only the provision but the outcomes of pharmacy services. The elements of pharmacy services that are critical to safe, effective, and cost-conscious medication use in a hospital include (1) practice management, (2) medication-use policy development, (3) optimizing medication therapy, (4) drug product procurement and inventory management, (5) preparing, packaging, and labeling medications, (6) medication delivery, (7) monitoring medication use, (8) evaluating the effectiveness of the medication-use system, and (9) research. Although the scope of pharmacy services will vary from site to site, depending upon the needs of patients and the hospital as well as the resources available, these core elements are inextricably linked to successful outcomes. Failure to provide any of these services may compromise the quality of patient care.