Pharmacy Compounding: For Three Premier Partners, the Future Is Now

Key Takeaways

• Prisma Health and University Hospitals (UH) partnered with Premier’s 503B Pharmacy Compounding Services to address growing challenges in pharmacy compounding.
• Premier equipped STAQ Pharma, a 503B outsourcing supplier, with site audit and evaluation documents to support rapid onboarding of health systems and 503B market utilization data to support strategic decision making on production and drug development.
• Premier’s expertise in data transparency and auditing helped each organization identify inefficiencies, optimize processes and standardize practices, improving both operational outcomes and patient care.

Successful pharmacy operations often require more than internal efficiency. Increasingly complex regulations, unpredictable drug shortages and opaque supply chains are driving many health systems to seek strategic partnerships and shared expertise from external partners, especially when it comes to pharmacy compounding. By leveraging collaborative networks, advanced technology and data-driven practices, forward-thinking healthcare organizations are streamlining operations, maintaining compliance and elevating patient care.

With expert guidance and structured oversight, pharmacy teams can stay ahead of myriad industry challenges while consistently delivering high-quality outcomes. Explore how three organizations — STAQ Pharma, Prisma Health and University Hospitals (UH) — are doing just that with Premier.

STAQ Pharma: Transforming 503B Performance through Transparency, Insight and Collaboration

When STAQ Pharma launched its hospital-owned 503B outsourcing facility in 2018, it aimed to solve a critical problem: to reliably provide sterile, compounded medications to hospitals and healthcare systems facing drug shortages across the nation.

With a focus on safety, transparency, availability and quality, STAQ specializes in creating ready-to-administer customized doses — including adult, pediatric and oncology medications — to help hospitals avoid errors and improve patient outcomes. Its operations, carried out in two Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered, Current Good Manufacturing Process (CGMP)-compliant facilities in Colorado and Ohio, leverage automation to ensure precision and consistency in every dose.

“Our goal is to take the complexity out of drug preparation for hospitals so they can focus on patient care,” said Mark Spiecker, President of STAQ Pharma.

STAQ’s commitment to addressing drug shortages extends beyond hospitals to include ambulatory surgery centers. From compounding adult doses into pediatric-friendly formulations, to producing ready-to-administer sterile injectables, the outsourcing supplier ensures critical medications are in stock and ready to ship when needed.

To amplify its impact, STAQ partnered with Premier — making Premier the first group purchasing organization (GPO) to inspect STAQ’s facility and publish a comprehensive evaluation summary report available to all members. This collaboration uncovered opportunities for improvement including:

• Aligning with United States Pharmacopeia (USP) General Chapter <7> and Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) labeling standards.
• Strengthening internal processes and improving communication with hospitals.

Premier's evaluation process is more than just a regulatory audit: While the FDA focuses on six key systems, Premier’s approach assesses over 20 areas that are priority for members. This includes going beyond minimum requirements and looking at best practices.Through deep collaboration, Premier didn’t just provide data; they worked alongside STAQ to interpret it and guide strategy.

“We spent weeks analyzing the data, then sat down with the Premier team to confirm whether our strategy matched what hospitals needed,” Spiecker said. “Ninety percent of the time, we were aligned. The other ten percent? Premier went back to their committees, gathered new insight and came back with answers. Working together has allowed us to double our Premier GPO business over the last year.”

The iterative collaboration has helped prevent STAQ from misaligning production, overinvesting in low-volume SKUs and missing critical patient needs. Gaining real-time insight into hospital pharmacy inventories, predictive demand analytics and data-driven oversight, STAQ has used Premier’s data to:

• Focus on preservative-free or alternative concentrations in high demand.
• Help ensure competitive pricing.
• Prioritize new product development.
• Plan for growth without compromising GMP quality.

Spiecker emphasized that compounding doesn’t work when suppliers operate in silos: “The industry should be an open-book test, not a pop quiz,” he said. “Working with Premier allows us to pair our manufacturing strength with cutting-edge technology to deliver medications more efficiently and reliably. It’s not just about filling orders; it’s about giving hospitals the insight and tools to manage medications proactively and keep patients safe.”

Prisma Health: Turning Compounding Challenges into Systemwide Confidence

For Prisma Health, the largest health system in South Carolina, ensuring that patients always receive safe, high-quality compounded medications isn’t just a goal — it’s a necessity. But like many large health systems, Prisma’s pharmacy teams have faced the unpredictable realities of outsourced compounding: sudden shortages, compliance gaps and opaque supply chain visibility.

“The biggest issues have been shortages and compliance,” said George Smith, Prisma’s System Sterile Compounding Services Specialist. “Something goes on shortage, and we’re often left in the dark until it becomes an emergency.”

Prisma found an ally in Premier in 2023. By integrating Premier’s 503B Safety and Quality Evaluations and participating in its Compounding Collaborative, Prisma Health transformed uncertainty into actionable insights, empowering its pharmacy teams to make faster decisions with greater confidence and enabling a more resilient supply chain.

“We were recently told a product wasn’t available from our usual 503B,” Smith said. “Thanks to a Premier evaluation summary, [which expedited the onboarding of a new 503B supplier], we had it in hand within a few days rather than what would have been a two-week process.”

Prisma Health has leveraged Premier’s evaluations to dramatically improve workflow and oversight: Previously, evaluating 503B outsourcing facilities was time-consuming, inconsistent and fraught with gaps in understanding regulatory nuances. Now, thanks to its partnership with Premier, Prisma Health can instantly reference detailed evaluation summaries, including FDA 483 findings, staff interviews and operational observations — shifting the system from reactive troubleshooting to proactive decision-making.

“Premier’s evaluations have replaced monthly 503B committee meetings (now quarterly), giving our team time back to focus on patient care while maintaining compliance,” Smith said.

The partnership has also fostered trust across pharmacy teams. Staff now make faster, safer sourcing decisions with complete clarity regarding compliance and risk.

“Premier’s partnership has been invaluable in building confidence for our supply chain,” Smith said. “We can make real-time decisions based on reliable evaluation data rather than guesswork.”

Beyond efficiency and compliance, the partnership fosters a learning culture. Participating in Premier’s Compounding Collaborative, Prisma Health shares best practices with other health systems, staying ahead in regulatory readiness and compounding innovation.

“Being part of the collaborative allows us to assimilate different ways of doing things, share ideas and build on best evidence — it's a true partnership,” Smith said.

Furthermore, Premier’s analytics tools have helped Prisma Health optimize sourcing and validate purchasing patterns. By comparing internal electronic medical record (EMR) data with external 503B insights, the system gains a clearer picture of product availability and usage, improving both cost management and patient safety.

“The patient is always first,” Smith said. “Premier helps us keep it that way, with intelligence, trust and a commitment to quality.”

UH Hospitals: Scaling Safety and Compliance Across a Multi-Hospital System

As a multi-hospital system serving communities across Northeast Ohio, UH Hospitals has long been committed to delivering safe, high-quality care. Yet, as demand for compounded medication grew and regulations became increasingly stringent, UH recognized the need for a partner that could help elevate both safety and performance without overburdening staff.

“Before partnering with Premier, we managed external 503A and 503B compounder partnerships independently,” said Bridget Gegorski, UH Medication Safety Manager. “We saw opportunities for improvement in efficiency, safety and consistency across our network. Premier provided a framework for review that we could leverage to enhance compliance with CMS contracted vendor quality assurance reviews.”

The UH pharmacy compounding strategy leans into systemwide governance, technology-enabled safety and strategic partnerships. The USP Compliance Committee and designated responsible individuals (DRIs) oversee audits and continuous improvement across all sites. Each site’s DRI is charged with maintaining compounding quality and compliance at their entity. Prior to the system’s partnership with Premier, external audit for 503B pharmacies fell to a single system resource. This, in turn, created constraints to onboarding new external compounding vendors.

Partnering with Premier amplified UH efforts. Through 503B evaluation summaries, dashboards and supplier insights, UH can streamline vendor selection, track quality in real time and reduce the need for frequent on-site audits. This frees internal staff to focus on patient-centered hospital compounding while maintaining rigorous compliance and oversight.

“The reports and repository, where I can pull them in one concise format, are invaluable,” Gegorski said. “It gives me an objective, third-party view that complements our internal reviews.”

“It’s like having another expert on my team to help research complex issues.”

The results are clear: UH pharmacy teams work more efficiently, product safety is enhanced, and systemwide USP <797> and <800> compliance has improved measurably. And, by sharing its scalable compliance model through Premier’s Compounding Collaborative, UH not only safeguards its own patients but also influences best practices nationally.

Looking ahead, UH Hospitals plans to leverage these insights to standardize vendor selection, optimize contract review and maintain systemwide visibility on quality and supply chain performance — continuing to build on a pharmacy operation that’s resilient, efficient and future-ready.

“We’re very lean at UH,” Gegorski said. “Leveraging our partners helped us do more with less.”

For more:

• Don’t wait for the next shortage. Click here to learn more about how a partnership with Premier can help futureproof your compounding strategy.