Identifying New Zealand Public Preferences for Pharmacist Prescribers in Primary Care: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Given increasing patient populations, general practitioner workforce constraints and the growing demand for health services in New Zealand (NZ), the development and provision of pharmacist prescribing services could be used to improve people's access to medicines. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was utilised to determine NZ public preferences for pharmacist prescribing services in primary care in NZ.

A D-efficient DCE design generated 20 choice questions in four blocks of five questions with three labelled alternatives per choice question. The online DCE used a NZ general public online research panel administered by an external organisation (SurveyEngine). The DCE included six attributes with two attributes each with two levels (location of consultation and consultation type), three levels (type of service and operating hours) and four levels (waiting time and cost).

Nine hundred and twenty-four respondents completed the survey with 4620 observations available for analyses. Respondents preferred pharmacist prescribing services with the following characteristics: optimisation of medicines and changes to only current medicine service types (relative to repeat prescribing); lower consultation costs, shorter waiting times, longer operating hours and consultation by appointment (relative to walk-in and wait clinic).

Prescribing policy could incorporate these public preferences to help develop accessible and effective primary care prescribing services utilising the skills of pharmacist prescribers to improve and reduce inequities in access to medicines in NZ. These results suggest the NZ public see pharmacists as part of the primary care prescribing team and are willing to utilise them if these services are implemented.