Subcontracting the manufacture of chemotherapies for a distant hospital

The Pharmacie des Hôpitaux de l’Est Lémanique (PHEL), a hospital pharmacy located in the regional hospital “Riviera” in Vevey, Switzerland, runs since over three years a department centralizing the preparation of all chemotherapies of the hospital, in order to increase the safety of the operator and the patient.

Following the merger of the oncology units of the Riviera hospital and the Chablais hospital (almost thirty kilometers apart) and after a feasibility study, the pharmacy has now extended this preparation service of chemotherapies to the second institution.

The implementation of this type of service involves several parameters:

• A computerized prescription from a distant site

• The review of the pharmacotechnical unit opening hours

• The harmonization of the activities of the two oncology departments

• An efficient delivery service

• A hotline available for nurses

After six months of activity, the service is optimized and the organization changes are considered very satisfying by oncologists and nurses who do not wish to return to their previous way of working.

This experience demonstrates the feasibility for a hospital pharmacy to prepare chemotherapies for other hospitals distant from the production site. This secures the use of cytostatics, despite the constraints of in advance preparation and transportation.