Changes to minimum doses start soon

Certain medications will no longer be split

To match home doses with inventory on hand (and avoid purchasing every strength of every medicine we carry), sometimes Pharmacy will cut tablets of medication in half.

For example, a 100 mg thiamine might be split to make a 50 mg dose to match what the patient is taking at home. However, cutting tablets in half can create several issues, such as increased workload (for very little therapeutic difference) with no guarantee that the split tablet contains the labeled dose (due to uneven splitting, uneven distribution of the medication throughout the pill, etc.).

After a discussion at the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, the following medications will no longer be split to doses smaller than the size listed in the table below, starting in mid- to late March. Instead, for example, a 200 mg dose of magnesium oxide will be automatically rounded to or substituted to a 400 mg dose, and a half-tablet of a multivitamin tablet will be changed to a full tablet.

Questions? Contact Matt Tanner, PharmD, BCPS, pharmacy clinical coordinator, at 503-814-9960 or matthew.tanner@salemhealth.org.