Applying decision analysis to pharmacy management and practice decisions.

Decision analysis, a structured approach to decision making, is presented and applied to a typical management situation. Decision analysis is an explicit, quantitative, and prescriptive approach to choosing among alternative outcomes. It engenders in the decision maker an analytical viewpoint, the need to structure the various courses of action and the resultant consequences of the actions, to assess the degree of uncertainty of the actions occurring, and to value the preferences for the alternative outcomes. Literature examples of using pharmacy-related decision analysis are provided, including its use in formulary additions, cost-effectiveness analysis, drug therapy evaluation, therapeutic drug monitoring, and health policy issues.