Compounding is the long-established tradition in pharmacy practice that enables physicians to prescribe and patients to take medicines that are specially prepared by pharmacists to meet patients' individual needs.

Compounded Medicines are a vital part of quality medical care.

A growing number of people have unique health needs that off-the-shelf prescription medicines cannot meet. For them, customized, compounded medications prescribed or ordered by licensed physicians or veterinarians and mixed safely by trained, licensed compounding pharmacists are the only way to better health. Compounding is in even greater demand for treating animals because of the relatively narrow selection of medicines that are manufactured by pharmaceutical companies.

Pharmacists are the only health care professionals that have studied chemical compatibilities and can prepare alternate dosage forms. In fact, each state requires that pharmacy schools must as part of their core curriculum instruct students on the compounding of pharmaceutical ingredients.

Compounding pharmacies are licensed and regulated in the 50 states and the District of Columbia by their respective state boards of pharmacy.

Because every patient is different and has different needs, customized, compounded medications are a vital part of quality medical care.

The basis of the profession of pharmacy has always been the "triad," the patient-physician-pharmacist relationship. Through this relationship, patient needs are determined by a physician, who chooses a treatment regimen that may include a compounded medication. 

Physicians often prescribe compounded medications for reasons that include (but are not limited to) the following situations: 

• When needed medications are discontinued by or generally unavailable from pharmaceutical companies, often because the medications are no longer profitable to manufacture;
• When the patient is allergic to certain preservatives, dyes or binders in available off-the shelf medications;
• When treatment requires tailored dosage strengths for patients with unique needs (for example, an infant); When a pharmacist can combine several medications the patient is taking to increase compliance;
• When the patient cannot ingest the medication in its commercially available form and a pharmacist can prepare the medication in cream, liquid or other form that the patient can easily take;
• When medications require flavor additives to make them more palatable for some patients, most often children.

Also, compounding is extremely important to the veterinary community, which often requires more flavors, dosages and potency levels than commercially available medications supply.

 Did You Know that without pharmaceutical compounding. . .

• children would not have available to them syrups, elixirs, suspensions, and emulsions for most drugs that make it easier to take medications
  
• elders would not have access to new dosage forms to make it easier to take their medications
  
• patients, while hospitalized, would receive numerous different drugs individually instead of combined in a single intravenous admixture
  
• cancer drugs, if they could be given, would have to be given individually, rather than combined, which would result in longer administration times
  
• physicians would not have most nuclear pharmaceuticals available to diagnose or treat illnesses
  
• adults would be limited to very few strengths of drugs, unless they were willing to split the tablets to obtain the dose needed
  
• individualized therapies would not be available to patients
• patients would need to take drugs orally or by injection instead of by the newer methods of delivery into the body, to include trans dermal gels, etc.
  
• drugs that are discontinued due to "economic reasons" by a pharmaceutical manufacturer would no longer be available to patients
  
• drugs that are in short supply would not be available and this would interrupt a patients therapy that took so long to stabilize
  
• orphan drugs would be available to limited patients only
  
• patients would not have the option of new therapeutic approaches that physicians would like to use
  
• patients who are allergic to a preservative, dye, flavor, or other ingredient in a commercial product would have no options
  
• individuals maintained on "intravenous feeding" would require several different individual components
  administered separately instead of a single, compounded mixture
• patients would not have available to them the options of gummy bears, popsicles, most of the transdermal gels, oral inhalation solutions, medication sticks, iontophoresis solutions, phonophoresis solutions, etc.
  
• infants who are born prematurely would not have available to them many lifesaving and life sustaining drugs
  
• infants would not have available to them many drugs
  

"The fundamental difference between compounding and manufacturing, and the key element in making any such distinction, is the existence of the pharmacist/prescriber/patient 'triad' relationship.  This triad should control the preparation of the drug product.  Furthermore, compounded drugs are not for resale, but rather, are personal and responsive to a patient's immediate needs.
"Conversely, drug manufacturers produce batches consisting of millions of tablets or capsules at a time for resale, while utilizing many personnel and large scale manufacturing equipment, without knowledge of the specific patient who will ultimately consume them".

American Pharmacists Association Statement to the US Senate Special Committee on Aging
April 19, 2007