$1.8 Million and counting: how volatile agent education has decreased our spending $1000 per day.

Study Objective: Volatile anesthetic agents comprise a substantial portion of every hospital's pharmacy budget. Challenged with an initiative to lower anesthetic drug expenditures, we developed an education-based intervention focused on reducing volatile anesthetic costs while preserving access to all available volatile anesthetics. When postintervention evaluation demonstrated a dramatic year-over-year reduction in volatile agent acquisition costs, we undertook a retrospective analysis of volatile anesthetic purchasing data using time series analysis to determine the impact of our educational initiative.