Impact of Dispensing Services in an Independent Community Pharmacy.

Kaleb Payne,Elizabeth J Unni,Benjamin Jolley

doi:10.3390/pharmacy7020044

Kaleb Payne, Elizabeth J Unni + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy7020044

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Abstract

With approximately 300 prescriptions dispensed per day in a typical community pharmacy, several activities take place to ensure the safe dispensing of medicines. While some of these activities are common for all prescriptions, others need further activities such as prescription clarification. These activities are important to avoid any potential harm to the patient and improve medication adherence. The objective of this study was to measure the impact of these additional dispensing services in a community pharmacy by evaluating the documented patient notes. Two-hundred patients with annotations on their profiles between 1 July and 31 August 2018 were randomly selected and 322 notes were analyzed. The average number of notes per patient was 1.6. The majority of the notes were about contacting the patient/caregiver for prescription clarification (86.8%). When analyzed based on Medication Therapy Problems, 54.7% were related to adherence and 35.4% to safety. Using the cost saving estimate from the literature for each averted adverse event, these activities resulted in a minimum cost saving of $10,458. This study was able to show the positive impacts that everyday dispensing services in an independent community pharmacy have on ensuring the safe use of medication, thus potentially preventing adverse drug events and reducing health care costs.

Highlights

More than 7 million patients in the United States are affected by a preventable medication error annually in all health care settings [1]
This paper aims to show the impact of the additional dispensing activities carried out by pharmacy personnel including ensuring safe dispensing, avoiding potential adverse drug events, improving medication adherence, and cost savings
Though studies have examined the prevalence of medication errors, there was a knowledge gap regarding the additional dispensing activities carried out in a community pharmacy to reduce these medication errors, which is the major strength of this study

Summary

Introduction

More than 7 million patients in the United States are affected by a preventable medication error annually in all health care settings [1]. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 24–33% of adverse drug events following discharge from the hospital were preventable [1]. Few studies have been done to determine the rate of medication errors in the community pharmacy setting. At the US national level, reported dispensing errors at a rate of four errors per day in a pharmacy filling approximately 250 prescriptions a day, with 6.5% of them being clinically significant errors [2]. When converted to national statistics, this accounts for 51.5 million errors each year across the United States [3]. In the UK, the dispensing error rate was determined to be

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