(1344) Type and Frequency of Health Information Requests Made by Chain Community Pharmacists

Objectives: Community pharmacists provide a wide range of services and need access to patient health information (e.g., medication lists and laboratory results) in order to effectively provide care. This information is rarely available to community pharmacies within their own dispensing software. Contacting medical offices for patient health information can be ineffective, time intensive and cause workflow disruptions. Past studies have demonstrated a portion of medication therapy management (MTM) services could be completed through electronic health record (EHR) access without contacting the patient or prescriber. Recent survey research has established the information needs of independent pharmacists and the potential for health information exchange (HIE), however critical knowledge gaps remain. First, it is unknown whether the actual frequency and types of information requests made by community pharmacists align with self-reported survey data. Second, retail chain community pharmacies typically do not have access to EHRs or HIE data. To our knowledge, no studies have been published about HIE implementation in chain community pharmacies. Given their large regional and national reach, understanding the experiences of retail chain pharmacists will be essential for future planning and scaling of community pharmacist HIE models. The objective of this study is to quantify the frequency and type of patient information requests made by chain community pharmacists during routine practice.

Methods: Observational cross-sectional data will be collected via an electronic card study (i.e., the submission of brief data collection “cards” by clinicians during routine practice.) Specifically, data on patient information requests will be submitted by full-time pharmacists (defined as working a minimum of 32 hours per week) who are 18 years of age or older, read English, maintain an active pharmacist license, and are employed by a large chain pharmacy at a non-specialty location in a Midwestern city. The research team will use stratified random sampling, based on the store level demographics received, to select 30% of the pharmacies to seek inclusion in data collection.

Study information will be disseminated to the pharmacy managers at the selected pharmacies. From there, the pharmacy managers will choose to: a.) participate in the study themselves (i.e., agree to complete data submission), b.) connect the researchers with an alternative pharmacist at their location who meets the inclusion criteria listed above, or c.) decline participation on behalf of their location. Each participating pharmacy is limited to having one pharmacist submit data.

Participating pharmacists will be trained to complete a data collection form for each information request they make. The data collection form will be pilot tested for content and time to complete by three practicing community pharmacists, including the resident investigator and two community pharmacists licensed in Indiana. Pharmacists will be randomized to a two-week period of data collection. Following training, a member of the research team will reach out to participating pharmacists on their first day of data collection, and again after one week, in order to address potential challenges that they may encounter.

All data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics computed in SPSS to characterize the frequency and types of patient information requests made by chain community pharmacists.

Results: Results will be presented at the 2024 APhA Annual Meeting.

Conclusions: Conclusions will be presented at the 2024 APhA Annual Meeting.