Physician perceptions of clinical pharmacy encounters in a family practice clinic

The purpose of this study was to classify pharmacist-physician encounters in a family medicine center into three progressive levels of service in order to determine the physician's perception of the relative value of each level. The three levels of service were drug information, pharmacy consultation individualized to the patient, and pharmaceutical care-consultation with follow-up to monitor patient outcome. Physicians received a questionnaire with each encounter and were asked to rank questions regarding the quality of the information provided, the impact they perceived that the information had on patient care, and to assign a monetary value for each encounter. A total of 106 of 141 (75 percent) questionnaires suitable for analysis were stratified into drug information (25.5 percent), pharmacy consultation (49 percent), and pharmaceutical care (25.5 percent). Physicians' perceptions toward the quality, impact, and value of pharmacy services were favorable overall, but they perceived a significantly higher quality, impact, and value to pharmaceutical care encounters than for drug information and pharmacy consultation (p < 0.05).