Compliance · State rules

Office-use compounding in New Hampshire

Expressly permitted by statute, but only for products that are not commercially available

USPeptideRx EditorialLast reviewed: August 30, 2026

New Hampshire has a real, in-force statutory office-use permission, and it is gated: the products must be ones that are NOT COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE. A separate paragraph tells a pharmacist to supply a practitioner for administration to an individual patient in limited quantities, for administration only, and requires the pharmacy to keep records of what it sent to the medical office. Both halves have to be stated together: a bare permissive sentence is wrong without the commercial-availability gate, and a bare prohibition sentence is simply wrong. One caution sits underneath all of it — the board rule layer that the statute leans on for compounding standards has not been readopted since 2015 and appears to have lapsed.

The governing rule

New Hampshire’s office-use position is set by RSA 318:14-a, ¶¶ I and III. The text below is quoted verbatim; everything outside a quote block is our summary of it, and the two are kept visually separate on purpose.

RSA 318:14-a, ¶ I — the permission and its gate, in one sentence

Products that are not commercially available may be compounded for hospital or office use but shall not be resold or dispensed.

RSA 318:14-a, ¶ I, continued — where the standards come from

Except as provided in rules adopted under paragraph V for veterinarians, all compounding shall be done in compliance with the United States Pharmacopeia as defined by board of pharmacy rules.

RSA 318:14-a, ¶ III — the supply term, and a recordkeeping duty

A pharmacist shall offer a compounded drug product to a practitioner for administration to an individual patient, in limited quantities. The compounded drug products are for practitioner administration only and shall not be re-dispensed. The pharmacist shall maintain records to indicate what compounded drug products were provided to the medical office or practice.

What the rule requires in practice

Each item carries a confidence level. Verbatim rule text is high confidence; a reading of how two provisions interact, or a source that could not be re-verified, is not.

The gate is commercial availability, and it is the whole verdictHigh confidence: The permission reaches products that are not commercially available. That is a fallback-supply rule rather than a supply channel: if a manufactured equivalent can be bought, the statutory permission does not describe your order. Tennessee draws the same line, and alongside it New Hampshire is among the clearest examples in this file of a permission that exists but is scoped to unavailability.
What the permission forbids in the same breathHigh confidence: Product compounded for office use "shall not be resold or dispensed", and the separate supply paragraph says the products are for practitioner administration only and shall not be re-dispensed. So the office-stock route is an administration route and closes at the point the practitioner would hand something to a patient to take away.
A recordkeeping duty that runs to the supplying pharmacyHigh confidence: The pharmacist must maintain records of what compounded drug products were provided to the medical office or practice. It is a short clause and easy to skip, but it is the only office-use-specific paperwork obligation the statute imposes, and it sits on the pharmacy rather than on the practice.
The rule layer beneath the statute appears to have lapsed — and that is not the same as the statute lapsingMedium confidence: The statute sends compounding standards to the United States Pharmacopeia "as defined by board of pharmacy rules". The board part that carried those standards, Ph 404, was last adopted on 18 April 2015 and we found no readoption of it after that. New Hampshire rules expire by operation of law, and this same part expired twice before on a printed cycle. So the rule layer appears to have lapsed. The statutory permission is unaffected and remains in force.We are deliberately not printing an expiry date. The direction is well supported — no readoption after 2015 — but the specific date is not, and a confident wrong date is worse than an honest "appears to have lapsed". Confirm current status against the New Hampshire rules database before relying on the rule layer either way.
QuantityHigh confidence: The statute says "in limited quantities" and does not define it. There is no percentage, no day-supply and no per-practitioner ceiling in the statutory text.
Last changeHigh confidence: The section’s source line records amendment in 2013, effective 1 January 2014, and again in 2019, effective 27 September 2019. The office-use language has been in force throughout.

New Hampshire at a glance

New Hampshire office-use compounding summary, reviewed 2026-08-30
Human office use	Permitted by statute, for products that are not commercially available
Sterile preparations	The statute draws no sterility line; the rule that did appears to have lapsed
Quantity cap	No number — "in limited quantities", undefined
Mandatory label legend	None in the statute for human office use
Board reporting	The pharmacy must record what it supplied to the medical office
Last change	Statute amended 2019; the board rule not readopted since 2015
Governing rule	RSA 318:14-a, ¶¶ I and III

Receiving 503B office stock in New Hampshire

New Hampshire uses the literal term for the credential, and its board sits inside the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification rather than standing alone. The controlled-substance side is the part worth reading twice, because it splits by schedule in a way that is easy to miss.

Everything above this heading answers the supply question: may a state-licensed 503A pharmacy ship non-patient-specific stock? This section answers the other half. Registration with FDA under section 503B is a federal exemption from federal law and preempts no state licensing scheme, so it is never the whole answer on its own — a state credential is the norm rather than the exception, it is not always issued by the board of pharmacy, and in some states the category you would search for does not exist. What New Hampshire asks for is set out below, including where we could not establish it.

What the 503B must hold to ship inMedium confidence: A licence from the Board of Pharmacy, which is administered within the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification. New Hampshire uses the literal term for the category, so searching its law for the phrase returns the right provisions.
Does your practice need a permit?Medium confidence: The statutory office-use permission is written as a duty on the pharmacist supplying the practitioner rather than as a credential the practice must obtain. The paperwork the statute names sits with the pharmacy.
Administer vs dispenseHigh confidence: This is the sharpest line in New Hampshire’s scheme. Compounded office stock is for practitioner administration only; it may not be resold, dispensed or re-dispensed. Holding stock to administer in the office is the permitted shape, and handing it to a patient is outside the permission on the statute’s own words.
Scheduled (controlled) stockMedium confidence: New Hampshire runs its own controlled-substance scheme, and it does not treat all schedules alike: the statute opens a pharmacy-to-practitioner route for Schedule II on an official written order, and is silent by omission about the lower schedules. For this vertical the point is usually moot, since compounded peptides and hormones are legend drugs rather than scheduled substances.

How to check a facility’s credential before you order is set out in how to place an office-use order.

The federal layer still applies

Whatever New Hampshire law allows, federal law applies on top of it and is not satisfied by state permission. 21 U.S.C. § 353a conditions the federal compounding exemptions on a drug being compounded for an identified individual patient on receipt of a valid prescription order. A state rule cannot create a federal safe harbour, and several state rules say so in their own text. The separate federal pathway for non-patient-specific office stock is the 503B outsourcing facility — the differences are set out in 503A vs 503B.

For how New Hampshire compares with the other states reviewed, see the state-by-state comparison.

What this page does not establish

The current status of the board rule Ph 404 is the biggest open item on this page. We established that it was adopted in 2015 and found no readoption after that, and New Hampshire rules expire by operation of law — but we could not confirm the length of the expiry term from the statute, so we are not publishing an expiry date. A single query against the state rules database would settle it, and anyone relying on the rule layer should run that query rather than rely on this page.
A readoption of Ph 404 would restore a rule layer that currently appears to be absent, and would change what standards attach to compounding here. There is no published date for that, so it is a live but undated change to watch.
Whether New Hampshire has a percentage-based wholesale exemption of the kind several other states use was not checked for this page.
We searched no case law, attorney-general opinions, board newsletters or disciplinary orders for this state, and search engines were unavailable when it was researched. Read nothing into that silence — it means we have not looked, not that nothing is there.

Sources

Primary sources, fetched directly from the issuing body. No secondary summaries.