USP and Healthcare Providers

Healthcare providers—including pharmacists, doctors and nurses, dieticians, and veterinarians—are the backbone of a well–functioning healthcare system. They are also valued partners for USP. Since 1820, USP has worked with healthcare providers representing various specialties as it strives to improve the health of people around the world through public standards and related programs that help ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods. In fact, USP has a nearly 200–year old tradition of electing a physician president to lead the USP Convention, the volunteer body of experts that guides and facilitates the organization's work. USP also has elected a pharmacist to chair its Board of Trustees since 1900. USP works in a number of areas to support the work of healthcare providers, including medicines, dietary supplements, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit program.

More specific information and resources are available for:

• Pharmacists
• Doctors and Nurses
• Dieticians
• Veterinary Medicine Professionals

Medicines

USP sets scientifically developed standards that help to ensure the medicines healthcare providers prescribe or administer to their patients are of high quality, are pure, are of the appropriate and expected strength, and are consistent from one pill, bottle, shelf, and pharmacy to the next. These written standards are published in USP's United States Pharmacopeia–National Formulary (USP–NF). In the United States, federal law requires that prescription and over–the–counter medicines sold in the country meet USP–NF standards, when such standards are available. These are enforceable by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Beyond standards for specific drugs and ingredients, the USP–NF includes other standards designed to help practitioners maintain and improve patient safety by specifying good practices, such as how to maintain a physical environment in pharmacies that promotes safe medication use and reduces the likelihood of medication errors (e.g., using proper task lighting and sound absorbing ceiling materials to keep noise levels down and decrease distractions). In addition to their use in the United States, USP standards are relied upon in more than 130 countries.

The existence of standards designating a drug's identity, quality, purity, strength, and consistency is of critical importance to the health of patients, who rely on good–quality medicines for saving lives, restoring health, and treating and preventing diseases. The need for these standards is becoming even more important as drug manufacturing supply chains become more complex. With the rise of a global manufacturing environment in which drugs and their ingredients are produced throughout the world in sometimes widely disparate facilities such standards are necessary to assure that one batch of drug is essentially equivalent to the next. This global environment also provides opportunity for unscrupulous manufacturers to adulterate medicines and their ingredients for economic gain—putting patients' lives in danger. USP continuously updates its standards, and is focusing on those for products that are considered "as risk" for adulteration.

Dietary Supplements

Dietary supplements are a component of many patients' overall healthcare regimen. Patients may take them to generally enhance their health, or to meet a specific dietary need based on a vitamin deficiency or situation such as pregnancy. Healthcare providers often recommend that patients take vitamins for one or more of these reasons. However, dietary supplements are not regulated by the same guidelines as the medicines they often appear with in store aisles. As such, identifying quality supplements to recommend to patients can be a challenge. Dietary supplements are only subject to USP standards when they are labeled as such. To help healthcare professionals and consumers identify quality supplements, USP operates a separate "verification" program for dietary supplements. Manufacturers can voluntarily submit their products for testing by USP, and dietary supplements that meet the program's strict criteria are awarded the USP Verified Mark. For more information on the program, click here.

Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program

Under a Congressional mandate, USP has developed—and will continue to update—a drug classification system for the Medicare prescription drug benefit program. This classification system provides a framework that pharmaceutical benefit managers and prescription drug plan sponsors can use in determining medicines approved for coverage under Medicare. For more information, click here.