Decreased medication costs in a skilled nursing facility by clinical pharmacy services.

After 1 month of monitoring the drug regimens of 25 randomly selected skilled nursing facility patients, clinically trained pharmacists were able to decrease the total number of medications from an average of 6.0 medications per patient to 4.2 medications per patient. Not only was the number of prescribed medications decreased, but also the total number of administered doses was decreased by 18.6%. The potential additive savings to the state of Washington through decreases in the number of state-funded medications, and to the skilled nursing facilities through decreases in nursing medication administration time, amount to $0.40 per patient per day or approximately $1.7 million annually.