Patients requiring ophthalmic consultation often require eye drops such as proparacaine for numbing the eye as well as phenylephrine and tropicamide for a dilated eye exam for a total of 3 medications.  Due to CMMS regulations, each patient needs a new order and new bottles of each medication for what is most often a single use.  These bottles of medication are anywhere from 2mL to 15mL and each bottle retails between $1 to $50 depending on brand and size, which is a hefty cost when often only 2 drops are needed from the entire bottle.  Depending on what the cost of these drops are at UCSF, the hospital could consider re-packaging the drops into single-use vials similar to those of preservative-free artificial tears to reduce wastage and even storage space.  If these mixed vials are created, the drops can also be mixed together so that even less packaging and medication is wasted and patients require only one drop placed into each eye .