Drug Utilization Review (DUR) is a coordinated effort by physicians and pharmacists to ensure pharmaceutical safety. DUR can be done concurrently by the pharmacist through concurrent drug utilization review (CDUR) while a prescription is being processed or retrospectively through retrospective drug utilization review (RDUR) by reviewing claims for potential safety issues that are not addressed at the point of dispensing. The goals of DUR are to:
- Continuously evaluate and ensure that optimum drug therapy outcomes are achieved
- Continuously improve patient compliance
- Reduce inappropriate drug use and related hospitalizations/office visits
- Decrease adverse effects of interactions of drug use
Concurrent Drug Utilization Review (CDUR)
The CDUR program identifies potential drug therapy issues and alerts the dispensing pharmacist to evaluate the issue and determine the best course of action for the intervention. The following are the CDUR alerts:
- Therapeutic appropriateness as determined by the pharmacist’s clinical judgment
- Therapeutic interchange
- Generic use
- Excessive doses/high dosages
- Drug dosages
- Dose optimization
- Duplicate therapy
- Drug-disease contraindications
- Over and underutilization
- Drug-age precautions
- Drug-pregnancy precautions
- Drug-drug interactions
- Drug-gender alerts
- Drug-allergy interactions
- Duration of therapy
- Clinical abuse or misuse
- Quantity and/or number of refills
- Regulatory limitations
- Benefit design
Retrospective Drug Utilization Review (RDUR)
RDUR reviews claims within 72 hours of processing for potential safety issues that are not addressed at point of dispensing. The review identifies potential opportunities for improvement in drug therapy, safety concerns which can be addressed after the claim is dispensed, or opportunities to share important clinical information with the prescriber.
Revision History
| Date | Nature of Revision |
|---|---|
| 08/03/2026 | Migrated to new platform.
|