Cost savings from dose rounding of biologic anticancer agents in adults

Abstract

Routine dose rounding of biologic anticancer agents to an amount within 10% of the ordered dose achieved cost savings through reduction of drug wastage at our institution.

Economic evaluations of clinical pharmacist interventions on hospital inpatients: a systematic review of recent literature

“…Thirtythree interventions on biologic agents provided savings of US$15,922 in a US hospital [23]. Pharmacists simply rounded the dose of anticancer agents to reduce medication waste.…”

“…Interventions were in following areas antimicrobial management [17][18][19][20][21][22], targeted drug programmes [23][24][25][26], multidimensional clinical pharmacy service [27][28][29], paediatric programmes [30,31], renal specialist [32,33], pharmacotherapeutic optimisation [34,35], intensive care service [36,37] and neurosurgery [38]. All intervention types have been identified in previous reviews of the literature [10][11][12][13].…”

Impact of dose rounding of cancer therapy on cost avoidance: a pilot study

“…Authors reported the results with significant cost saving [2][3][4][5][6][7]. The most common method of calculating the dose of anticancer drugs is body surface area (BSA); a function of a patient's height and weight in addition to per weight basis.…”

“…In such a case one vial of 400 mg plus 3 vials of 100 mg or 7 vials of 100 mg will be used. Accordingly we will save one 100 mg vial [5][6][7]. Another study applied dose rounded to chemotherapy such as oxaliplatin which is used heavily in colorectal cancer protocols.…”

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“…Some other strategies proposed to reduce cancer treatment expenditures using the rational application of personalized dose principle, dose rounding to the nearest vial size 5,6 , dose standardization 7 of anticancer drugs and, selecting the most convenient vial size 8 .…”