And is it different from a regular, garden-variety pharmacy? We have one near our house.
Thanks.
Regular pharmacies have the products made up by pharmeceutical supplier.
A compounding pharmacy is one where they measure out the drugs and mix them up into preparations on-site, as well as sell pre-made products.
Really simply, it is a pharmacy that prepares medication rather than just dispensing it. They will make what is normally an oral medicine into a cream for transdermal absorbtion (as an example) or make suppositories.
They still do what all pharmacies used to do 50 years ago. Now they are an exception.
(Geez, what a horrible explanation - someone help me out here.)
Should say “Regular pharmacies have the products made up by pharmeceutical manufacturer.”, of course.
A standard pharmacy typically dispenses just off the shelf commercial quantities of prescription drugs. Such as:
Tylenol 4
Dispense 160
Sig: Take 1 every 6 hours as needed per pain.
(Well, in the real world I’d more expect:
Tylenol 4
#160
Sig: take 1 qh4 prn pain)
There’s a sort of medical shorthand used. And if you’ve ever seen some doctors handwriting, you’d know why. I’ve caught on scripts I’ve got from nurses bizarre ones. Like wrong drug with an impossible dosage set for the drug, not to mention the drug makes no sense for the disease. And any seasoned pharm will have seen many in years of practice. I ASSURE YOU SUCH THINGS HAPPEN.
Compounding is usually mixing several different drugs. Sort of like a cough syrup prescribed to only one patient to make it easier for them. Think of 1 elderly patient prescribed oe drug.
If you have need of a drug in a dosage amount, or method of delivery (cream, suppository) that differs from the mass market, mass produced, off the shelf variety…you need one of these places.
Good description. And any pharmacist can do this. Although his bosses might not like it if all they want is a glorified pill counter. Which may make the pharmacist want to do so even more. 
Ever want to stroke a pharmacist’s ego? Start asking them about drugs, preferably at off hours. I’ve talked over an hour all about DXM abuse. Few know about that more than me. And, it drives pharmacists crazy when local TV stations do a report about DXM abuse and say “Coricidin is just like LSD.” Facinating, as DXM is in the drug class that PCP and ketamine are. Sort of like reporting crack is like heroin because they are both well known addictive drugs.
Put it this way: any pharmacist (as opposed to pharmacist’s clerk) is trained to compound individual medications. But most chain pharmacies don’t care to make a practice of doing it; it’s less profitable than filling prescriptions for pre-manufactured amounts.
A compounding pharmacy is one that promotes itself as willing to do compounding. Hence you’ll get a pharmacist who is not merely trained but also experienced at preparing medicaments to order.
rfgdxm, you and I could have some looong chats, honey. IM me sometime.
I’ve used a compounding pharmacy a couple of times. My orthopaedic surgeon prescribed a ketoprofen gel to be applied topically for achilles tendinitis. That wasn’t available as a standard item, so he sent me to the compounding pharmacy. Our vet has also sent us to the same place to get some not-so-standard prescription drugs for our dog.
Yup, this is good to know for pet owners whose animals won’t take a pill, for example. The pharmacy can often make the same med in liquid form that can be mixed with food or squirted into a pet’s mouth with a syringe. Providing, for example, you have one squirter and several other people to hold the cat. 
Yup. Our golden retriever is taking a bacon-flavored antibiotic liquid now. We don’t have to worry about squirting it into her mouth. We just measure and squirt it onto a plate, and she licks up every drop.
My hometown had a compounding pharmacy whose claim to fame was selling medicated lollipops for kids. They also made stuff in really weird flavors, apparently. However, they were a lot more expensive than the regular pharmacies so we never went there; it was just written up in the local paper.
Full disclosure: I work in the compounding pharmacy industry. I’m a fan of it because I hear about great results every day.
As stated above, compounding is when a pharmacist makes a prescription “from scratch” instead of just using a manufactured product or dosage form. The dosage form for a drug can be changed to suit the patient, which is especially helpful for children, critically ill or hospice patients, or anyone else who has trouble taking a prescribed medication. Compounding serves many patients (both human and veterinary) who need a dosage form or amount that is not commercially available. If you ever need a certain drug and the big drug manufacturer decides it’s not cost effective to continue mass-producing it, a compounding pharmacist might be your new best friend.
If a child cannot swallow a tablet or capsule, the drug may be crushed into a powder and compounded into a suspension which can be flavored to mask a nasty flavor and make it more palatable. In many cases hospice patients have their pain medications compounded into transdermal gels so they don’t have to swallow something difficult or take something that will upset their stomachs. A transdermal preparation often has a lower dose of the medication than an oral medication, which may allow the patient to be pain-free while remaining lucid enough to spend some time with loved ones during his or her final days.
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Similarly they must object to the use of the word ‘narcotic’ to cover just any illegal drug, but that usage is far too deeply entrenched to ever change.
Most OTC cold remedies already include acetominophen, and if you’re already taking that for something else, you don’t need more of it. It’d be great if you could go up to any pharmacy counter and say you want Coricidin HBP – and please hold the Tylenol.