Pharmacoeconomics and Safe Medication Use
Formulary management to determine whether newly marketed or approved medications should be
included/excluded with/without use criteria that may affect prescribing patterns
Creation of therapeutic interchanges for various drug classes or individual agents (ie, biosimilars)
with known equivalence
use of medications in the context of safety and efficacy
One situation in which this may be forced is a drug shortage that affects the availability of standard
of care at your institution. This forced evaluation may identify more cost-effective practices based
on evidence-based medicine.
Implementation of drug use policy to promote the most efficient use of health care products and services
Perform program evaluations to determine the value of an existing medical or pharmacy service or
the potential worth of starting a new service, in addition to guiding the establishment of key business
objectives or metrics of growth, adoption, or process control
Population health analytics (e.g., use of pharmacoeconomic analyses to determine evidence-based
medicine treatment decisions within a health system)
Determine individual patient treatment decisions
Publication of pharmacoeconomic evaluations with pharmacist involvement
Patient Case
A 30-year-old patient is admitted to the surgical ICU after a motor vehicle accident. Which would best
exemplify an indirect cost from their perspective?
In the United States, 770,000 injuries or deaths are caused by ADRs annually; the cost burden of ADEs
is greater than $5.6 million per hospital.
ADEs are estimated to occur in up to 7% of hospital admissions, with up to 14% of hospital
admissions attributable to ADEs.
A severe ADE increases the hospital length of stay by 8–12 days at a cost of $16,000–$24,000 per
patient.
The cost burden of preventable ADEs in the United States is $4.1 million per hospital annually.
Medical malpractice lawsuits are often related to, or occur because of, ADEs.
administered a high-risk medication and the potential for altered response to medications because of
altered pharmacokinetics and organ failure.