Patient satisfaction with pharmacist intervention and consultation in hormone replacement therapy: an update

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the satisfaction of women who took part in the pharmacist-administered bioidentical hormone replacement therapy consultation service at an urban compounding pharmacy has improved since implementation of a follow-up call program. A questionnaire was mailed to 200 randomly selected women who completed hormone replacement therapy consultation and received all three follow-up calls from the pharmacy during the period from July 22, 2003, to April 22, 2004. The returned surveys were tabulated and analyzed, and independent t-tests were used to compare data collected in 2001 with that collected in 2004 on questionnaire items of interest. Of the 200 surveys sent out to patients, 125 were returned completed (a response rate of 62.5%). Over 50% of the respondents heard about the hormone replacement therapy program through referral from their healthcare provider, and 34.4% from a friend or a relative. A large majority (95.9%) of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that the follow-up calls were helpful; however, only 73.8% felt comfortable discussing their concerns with student interns, who were responsible for making the follow-up calls. Most (95.2) of the respondents reported no new health conditions since initiation of natural hormone replacement therapy. The t-tests revealed improvement in patient satisfaction items between 2001 and 2004, indicating that patient satisfaction with the consultation service improved from 2001 to 2004, and most of the differences were statistically significant (P less than 0.05). The survey results also showed that participants were happy about the follow-up calls, which perhaps contributed to the increase in satisfaction.