(1255) Assessment of Pharmacists’ Perception and Knowledge of Emergency Refills in a Community Pharmacy Setting in the State of Colorado

Objectives: Medication adherence is the forefront of disease-state management. Adherence can be disrupted when a prescription is waiting to be authorized for additional refills from a provider’s office. Wait time intervals vary with each prescriber, leading to risks for non-adherence which can lead to medication withdrawal, hospitalization, or other events related to missed medication doses. The state of Colorado passed rule 3.00.23 in 2019 for pharmacists to dispense emergency refills without an order, not going into effect until 2020, near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this rule going into effect, many pharmacists within the company have stated that they are unaware or have not utilized this practice option, possibly due to the start of the pandemic. Limited use of this emergency rule led to the development of an educational intervention, designed to increase pharmacist understanding and comfort with emergency refill authorization for Colorado-based pharmacists in a large community pharmacy chain. The purpose of this study is to see if an educational tool about emergency refills changes the perception and understanding of emergency refills in a large community pharmacy chain.

Methods: This quasi-experimental study will utilize a one group pre-post-test design. The pre-post-test will consist of a modified version of a validated survey instrument that contains a 5-point Likert scale of knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs as well as questions assessing perception, comprehension, and understanding of emergency refills. The intervention delivered will be an asynchronous training module reviewing emergency prescription refills authorized by rule 3.00.23 from the Colorado Board of Pharmacy as well as where to locate specific documentation of this service per the company’s protocol. This company employs manager, staff, and floater pharmacists in 148 pharmacies across the state of Colorado. In January 2024, pharmacists will receive an initial survey and assessment via e-mail about their perception and understanding of emergency refills. After completing the initial survey, the educational tool will be provided for self-study. After one month of reviewing the self-study materials, the pharmacists will receive a post-educational survey to assess knowledge and perception in providing emergency refills. The primary objective will be the comparison of survey results pre-and post-educational intervention. The identity of the participants will be protected by using an encrypted computer provided by the company. Descriptive statistics will be used to assess the significance of the educational intervention. This project is currently under IRB review.

Results: Data collection has not yet begun due to IRB application in process. The goal is to start the study around December 2023 or January 2024 with the end goal of March/April 2024 for the first part of this research.

Conclusions: This study has the opportunity to impact pharmacists’ way of practice and has the potential to prevent hospitalizations or emergency room visits due to unintentional non-adherence to chronic maintenance medications.