Chain community pharmacists' requests for patient information during routine care

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Practice
• Health Informatics
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Community pharmacists require patient data for optimal service provision, but obtaining it is challenging.
• Current methods like contacting prescriber offices are often ineffective.
• Health Information Exchange (HIE) is a potential solution, but chain pharmacist needs are unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To characterize patient information requests made by chain community pharmacists during routine practice.

Main Methods:

• An electronic card study collected cross-sectional observational data from chain pharmacists in central Indiana.
• Pharmacists recorded information requests, reasons, sources, communication methods, and time spent.
• Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Main Results:

• Updated medication lists (41.3%) and insurance information (33.7%) were the most requested data types.
• Requests were primarily for prescription clarification/filling (93.4%).
• Prescriber offices (53.6%) and patients/caregivers (39.8%) were the main information sources; telephone was the primary communication method.

Conclusions:

• Chain community pharmacists need critical patient data for daily practice.
• Mechanisms like HIE are needed to bridge information gaps in community pharmacy settings.