(1231) Patient Perception of Automated Prescription Pickup in a Community Pharmacy

Objectives: Community pharmacy is experiencing new challenges and demands due to the growing number of prescriptions issued annually. This increasing demand requires an accompanying increase in pharmacy labor and service hours to adapt to the increasing needs of the American patient. In parallel, automation technology has increasingly been applied in service industries, including pharmacy services. Automation technology plays an important role in improving medication accuracy and patient safety, reducing operating costs, saving time, and increasing productivity while minimizing mistakes. One example of automation that is being implemented in community pharmacies is the contactless prescription pickup kiosk. Automated pickup kiosks allow patients to collect prescriptions that have already been ordered, filled, and verified by a pharmacist in the dispensing pharmacy. Applying this technology in prescription dispensing at community pharmacies can help to eliminate customer wait time, expand access hours, reduce pharmacy workload, minimize errors, and provide remote servicing options. The Texas State Board of Pharmacy allows and provides standards for the provision of automated dispensing pharmacy systems, including the storage and dispensing of prescription drugs in remote sites. The objective of this survey is to assess patient interest and acceptance of automated prescription pickup kiosks at the pharmacy and the demand for using pharmacy services after standard business hours. Results from this survey will be utilized to determine implementation of this service and technology on a broader level in both urban and rural settings.

Methods: This study will be conducted in a regional supermarket pharmacy in Central Texas. A cross-sectional survey will be implemented to assess patient interest and acceptance of automated prescription pickup kiosks at the pharmacy. The survey will consist of demographic items to further stratify and assess which patient populations would be most interested in utilizing this technology. Other questions will assess interest and comfort in using an automated cabinet via a 5-point Likert scale. The survey will also contain questions to assess demand for using pharmacy services after standard business service hours. Survey data will be analyzed using appropriate statistics to assess patient acceptance of automated pickup cabinets, trends in acceptance, and the demand for using after-business-hours services across patient demographics. This project is pending review by the University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board

Results: Pending

Conclusions: Pending