With cost containment pressures in healthcare, skilled nursing facilities are increasingly called upon to treat patients requiring a high degree of medical care and who would otherwise be treated in the more costly hospital environment. We provide intravenous, or infusion, therapy products and services for these client facilities as well as hospice and home care patients. Infusion therapy consists of the product (a nutrient, antibiotic, chemotherapy or other drugs in solution) and the intravenous administration of the product.

We prepare the product to be administered using proper equipment in an aseptic environment and then deliver the product to the nursing home for administration by the nursing staff. Proper administration of intravenous ("IV") drug therapy requires a highly trained nursing staff. Upon request, our consultant pharmacists and nurse consultants provide an education and certification program on IV therapy to assure proper staff training and compliance with regulatory requirements in client facilities offering an IV therapy program.

By providing an infusion therapy program, Omnicare enables its client facilities to admit and retain patients who otherwise would need to be cared for in a hospital or another type of acute-care facility. The most common infusion therapies we provide are total parenteral nutrition, which provides nutrients intravenously to patients with chronic digestive or gastro-intestinal problems, antibiotic therapy, chemotherapy, pain management and hydration.