Assessing community pharmacy services in health professional shortage areas across Wisconsin

Primary care health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) lack sufficient primary care providers to meet their health care needs, which contributes to worse health outcomes within underserved populations. Community pharmacies are commonly located in HPSAs and provide nondispensing services that can help address unmet health care needs. However, there is limited data on the nature, scope, and reimbursement for community pharmacy services.

Using survey data from the state of Wisconsin, this study compares the prevalence of and reimbursement for services provided by community pharmacies in primary care HPSAs and non-HPSAs and describes barriers to pharmacy service implementation.

A survey tool on pharmacy services, reimbursement, and barriers to service implementation was developed, pilot tested, and administered to every community pharmacy in Wisconsin. Data were collected via mail and online over two waves of survey administration from November 2021 to May 2022. Pearson's chi-squared and t tests were used to compare the prevalence of and reimbursement for services between HPSA and non-HPSA pharmacies. Content analysis was used to identify themes that described barriers to pharmacy service implementation.

Responses were received from 287 of 774 eligible community pharmacies (37.1%). HPSA pharmacies were significantly more likely to be in rural areas. Regardless of pharmacy location, community pharmacies reported commonly providing a variety of services, but reimbursement for these services was considerably less frequent. The prevalence of reimbursement was <50% for two-thirds of services. Pharmacy staffing, time, and financial issues were the most commonly reported barriers to service implementation.

Community pharmacies provide a diverse set of services to meet the health care needs of their patients, but often do so with inadequate staffing or reimbursement. Action is needed to support community pharmacies in meeting the health care needs of their communities and to ensure patient access to medications and pharmacy services.