Pharmacy compounding is the art and science of preparing customized medications for patients. Compounding provides a way for doctors, veterinarians and pharmacists to customize an individualized prescription for the specific needs of their patient because people may vary, but mediction forms often do not. A compounded prescription might be required when a suitable dosage form is not available, a manufacturer has discontinued a medication, or a patient has an allergy to a dye or preservative use in the commercially available product. Our compounding goal is to provide our patients with medical solutions tailored to their needs.

For over a hundred years, druggists mixed chemicals to prepare medicines for doctors to treat their patients. Each doctor had his own formulas for treating each illness. This was known as "compounded medicine" and was the standard way of filling a prescription. In the 1930's and 1940's, approximately 60% of all medications were compounded. After World War II, the manufacture of drugs began to dominate. The manufacturers did a lot of research and created many new medicines - with long patents - to prevent competition. During this time, the druggist had no source for the new chemicals to compound with. A pharmacist's role as a preparer of medications quickly changed to that of merely a dispenser of manufactured, mass-produced drugs. As patents ran out in the 80's and 90's, physicians and patients again realized the benefits of preparing customized medications to meet specific patient needs. Today, an approximately 43,000 prescriptions are compounded daily. That's one percent of all the prescriptions being dispensed. Today's compounding pharmacists are using modern technology and innovative compounding techniques to prepare prescriptions for the specific needs of patients to solve the many medicating problems that can't be solved with commercial drugs.

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