Background Intravenous treatment is expensive so we studied two different working options.

Purpose To evaluate the savings that preparing intravenous mixtures centrally in the pharmacy service hypothetically made in 2011 in our hospital.

Materials and Methods We compared the real observed costs incurred by preparing the intravenous mixtures in the pharmacy service and the expected cost if the mixtures were prepared on the wards by using complete vials for each patient and dose, discarding the remainder of the dose.

We have focused the study on the intravenous mixtures area selecting those drugs which need to be prepared individually for the correct dose and those used in the paediatric and neonatology area due to the low dose needed and its variability; however we excluded drugs used in oncology and nutrition from this study.

Results During 2011, 4053 intravenous mixtures were prepared.

The centralised preparation of liposomal amphotericin B (1017 treatments) made an estimated hypothetical saving of €15,226; infliximab preparation (894) hypothetically saved €122,856.

Romiplostim (234) generated savings of €59,551 and tocilizumab (174) €11,280.

In the neonatology area the standard preparation of 200 IU epoetin beta from NeoRecormon 500 IU hypothetically saved €603 with 1623 treatments.

Agalsidase alfa, a high financial impact drug used in Fabry’s disease, hypothetically made savings of €62,253 with 111 preparations.

Total savings generated by centralising the preparation of intravenous mixtures with these 6 drugs amounted to €271,770.

The median saving exceeded €67/treatment and €744/day. We achieved this situation by sharing vials and using the dose remaining from one treatment to prepare the next one.

Conclusions Centralization of intravenous mixtures allows us to increase efficiency and generate important financial savings, but in addition to increase the quality of healthcare, because it also involves us in pharmacotherapeutic monitoring and avoiding medicines errors. This practise also ensures drugs are handled correctly, which helps maintain their physicochemical and microbiological stability.

No conflict of interest.