Community Pharmacists' Experiences and Perception about Transitions of Care from Hospital to Home in a Midwestern Metropolis.

Rachel K Vossen,Yifei Liu,Peggy G Kuehl

doi:10.3390/pharmacy9040193

Rachel K Vossen, Yifei Liu + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy9040193

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Abstract

Objectives: (1) To describe the experiences of community pharmacists in transitions of care (TOC) from hospital to home in a Midwestern metropolis; and (2) to develop instruments to measure perceived importance of TOC activities. Methods: Survey items were developed, including a six-item instrument to capture perceived importance of TOC activities. The items were piloted to examine face validity before dissemination to 310 community pharmacists. Descriptive statistics were reported. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis for the six-item instrument were performed to assess construct validity and Cronbach’s alpha, respectively. Results: The response rate was 37% (n = 118). The majority of community pharmacists estimated that they learned of a patient’s discharge on less than 10% of the occasions. There were 76 cases in which the discharged patients experienced either a prescription- or medication-related problem. For the six-item measurement of perceived importance, one component was yielded and all items loaded on the component with high values, which confirmed construct validity. The Cronbach’s alpha for these six items was 0.941, indicating high reliability. Conclusions: A large communication gap existed for community pharmacists to receive patient discharge information. The six-item instrument to measure perceived importance of TOC activities was valid and reliable.

Highlights

Transitions of care (TOC) occur when patients move from one health care setting to another [1]
Based on the literature and our experiences, we developed survey items to examine community pharmacists’ experiences in TOC, and perception about how important TOC
Perceived importance of TOC activities was proposed to be under the component of collaborating, because this construct may drive community pharmacists to communicate with hospital-based physicians

Summary

Introduction

Transitions of care (TOC) occur when patients move from one health care setting to another [1]. It is estimated that poorly coordinated transitions from hospital to other settings in the U.S cost USD 12 to 44 billion per year [2]. 19–23% of patients discharged experience adverse drug events within five weeks [3,4], and 40–90% of patients discharged have medication discrepancies [5,6,7,8]. Of those with medication discrepancies, 25–30% can potentially develop serious morbidity [5,8,9].

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