Pharmaceutical interventions on prescriptions in Norwegian community and hospital pharmacies

Background Pharmacists in community and hospital pharmacies assess prescriptions to prevent prescription errors and adverse drug events. There are, however, few reports on prevalence of clinical important pharmaceutical interventions for patients located within primary care. Objective To study documented pharmaceutical interventions on prescriptions in Norwegian pharmacies for patients located in primary care. Setting Data were collected in 11 community pharmacies during a 3 months period in 2016, and the outpatient department of four hospital pharmacies in Norway during a 6 months period of 2018. Method Retrospective analysis of electronically documented pharmaceutical interventions on prescriptions for patients located in primary care. Main outcome measure The number and classification of pharmaceutical interventions in relation to the total number of prescriptions. Results An intervention was documented in 124,178 (45.1%) of the 275,339 prescriptions dispensed during the study period. Interventions of potential clinical importance were performed and documented in 0.8% (2262) of the prescriptions. Conclusion A substantial number of pharmaceutical interventions are performed on prescriptions in Norwegian pharmacies after introduction of electronic prescriptions. A potentially clinical important intervention is performed in one of every 125 prescriptions (0.8%). This result indicates that pharmacists at Norwegian pharmacies prevent more than 400,000 prescription errors of potential clinical importance each year.