Abstract
Background Community pharmacy services play an important role in controlling some factors related to medicine use and patients can benefit from these services to improve the adherence and knowledge of their medications, besides to reduce medicine-related problems. Objective The aim of the REVISA project is to carry out a study on preliminary implementation of the medicines use review service in Spanish community pharmacies. Setting Sixty-four community pharmacies from all regions of Spain. Method A preliminary implementation, cross-sectional multicentre study was conducted using a convenience sample of voluntary community pharmacies. A structured interview enabled to pharmacists to obtain a better understanding of patient’s medicines use. Main outcome measure Medicines use review-related time and cost, satisfaction and willingness to pay. Results A total of 495 patients were enrolled. The mean age of the patients was 66.1 years, with the majority females (56.4%) and a mean consumption of 5.7 medicines. A total of 2811 medicines were evaluated and 550 referral recommendations were made (29.8% to Primary Care). The mean time employed by the pharmacists in the medicines use review service was 52.8 min (medicines use review-related cost of €17.27). Most patients expressed a high level of satisfaction with this service (98.5%) and a willingness to pay for it (84%). Conclusion Medicines use review service in community pharmacies in Spain can be delivered, that it appears to be acceptable to patients and that most patients said they would be willing to pay for it. This service may offer an opportunity to promote inter-professional collaboration between pharmacists and general practitioners.
Highlights
The ageing population, less healthy lifestyles and an increasing incidence of chronic conditions mean that multimorbidity is on the rise [1]
Patients with multimorbidity are at higher risk of safety issues for many reasons, including polypharmacy, which may lead to poor medication adherence and adverse drug events [5,6,7,8]
Community pharmacy services play an important role in controlling some factors related to medicine use [9,10,11,12], and pharmaceutical services integrated with primary healthcare services are critical to achieve the desired outcomes and to significantly reduce harms that can otherwise arise from multiple medicine use, such as non-adherence or medicinerelated problems [13]
Summary
The ageing population, less healthy lifestyles and an increasing incidence of chronic conditions mean that multimorbidity is on the rise [1]. Patients with multimorbidity are at higher risk of safety issues for many reasons, including polypharmacy, which may lead to poor medication adherence and adverse drug events [5,6,7,8]. Community pharmacy services play an important role in controlling some factors related to medicine use [9,10,11,12], and pharmaceutical services integrated with primary healthcare services are critical to achieve the desired outcomes and to significantly reduce harms that can otherwise arise from multiple medicine use, such as non-adherence or medicinerelated problems [13]. Community pharmacy services play an important role in controlling some factors related to medicine use and patients can benefit from these services to improve the adherence and knowledge of their medications, besides to reduce medicine-related problems
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