What is Compounding?
Dating back to the origins of pharmacy, compounding is the science of customizing medications to our patient’s needs based on the physician’s request. It enables our pharmacy to serve you specifically in your medication needs to ensure that the medication is effective for you and your health care. Our goal is to increase patient compliance in any way that we can in order for your medication to be as effective as possible. Sondra Barker and our other pharmacists have mastered the ancient techniques of compounding to provide you with high quality and effective alternatives to your medications. We can offer you a variety of dosage forms, strengths, and even flavors. We will even be happy to take care of your family pet and their medication needs.

Why Compound a Medication?
The reasons for compounding are many while most involve noncompliance. Here are just a few:

Allergies:
Many patients have allergies to certain inactive ingredients that the manufacturer’s use. Specifically, we can make your prescription with different fillers, dyes, additives, etc. to minimize your allergic reaction to the medication.

Flavor:
Often times, especially in children, patients do not want to take their medication because of the taste. Working with the physician and the patient, we can add flavor to the medication (cherry, tutti-frutti, or even beef for your animal) to make it more palatable.

Dosage Forms:
Medications often work differently in different patients. We can compound your medications in different forms so that they will be more effective. We compound a variety of different dosage forms such as: suspensions, solutions, topical gels, creams, ointments, capsules, tablets, suppositories, drops, inhalants, ophthalmic, nasal sprays, vaginal, urethral, sublingual troches, lozenges, and even lollipops. For example, a person with arthritis might not get much benefit from an oral arthritis medication, or that medication may cause stomach upset. We can work with your physician to compound a different dosage form of the anti-inflammatory or analgesic, such as a gel, that will work more effectively in treating your pain.

Strengths not available
Your physician may want you to take a medication in a strength that is not made by the manufacturer. In this case, compounding is the solution. For example, we can compound specific height/weight pediatric medications.

Veterinary Medications
Our pharmacy is a member of ACVP and we take pride in preparing compounded medications for your family pet. Depending on size and breed of the pet, the specialized dosage form could make a difficult but needed treatment a lot easier. Whether it is fruit flavors for birds, tuna flavors for cats, or beef or chicken flavors for dogs, we can help.

Hormone Replacement Therapy
More than ever, physicians are calling upon our compounding pharmacists to meet the needs of per-menopausal and menopausal women and men (andropause) by use of compounded hormones. Our pharmacists can work with your physician to tailor a hormone regimen to mimic what a female’s body has been doing for the past 50 years. Hormones can be placed in a variety of dosage forms including: capsules, topical creams, sublingual troches, and many others.

Our ultimate goal in preparing any of these compounds is to help the physician and patient achieve patient compliance with their medications.

Working hard to improve your quality of life!