Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Dec 2009
Pharmacist's identity development within multidisciplinary primary health care teams in Ontario; qualitative results from the IMPACT project.
Multidisciplinary team development generates changes in roles, responsibilities, and identities of individual health care providers. The Integrating Family Medicine and Pharmacy to Advance Primary Care Therapeutics (IMPACT) project introduced pharmacists into family practice teams across Ontario, Canada, to provide medication assessments, drug information, and academic detailing and to develop office system enhancements to improve drug therapy. ⋯ Pharmacists found that the integration into team-based primary health care provided both challenges and fresh opportunities. Pharmacists' professional identities evolved in relation to valued role models, emerging practice-level opportunities, and their patient-related contributions.
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Dec 2009
Taking the lead: community pharmacists' perception of their role potential within the primary care team.
Patient-focused care provided by an interprofessional team has long been presented as the preferred method of primary care delivery. Community pharmacists should and can provide leadership for many clinical and managerial activities within the primary care team. ⋯ The findings of the study suggest substantial variability among pharmacists in their perception of the need for pharmacy leadership across 16 clinical and managerial activities.
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Sep 2009
The impact of nonreferral outpatient co-payment on medical care utilization and expenditures in Taiwan.
Taiwan's National Health Insurance's (NHI) generous coverage and patients' freedom to access different tiers of medical facilities have resulted in accelerating outpatient care utilization and costs. To deter nonessential visits and encourage initial contact in primary care (physician clinics), a differential co-payment was introduced on 15th July 2005. Under this, patients pay more for outpatient consultations at "higher tiers" of medical facilities (local community hospitals, regional hospitals, medical centers), particularly if accessed without referral. ⋯ Differential co-payment policy decreased total medication utilization but not costs to NHI. The results suggest that the increased level of co-payment charge and the strategy of a single cost-sharing policy are not sufficient to promote referrals within the system. To achieve an effective co-payment policy, further research is needed to explore how patients' out-of-pocket payment affects medical utilization and which forces (not susceptible to co-payment) act in tertiary facilities.
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Jun 2009
ReviewPharmacists' communication with Spanish-speaking patients: a review of the literature to establish an agenda for future research.
Spanish-speaking people represent more than 12% of the total population in the United States and are poised to become the largest minority group in the United States by 2015. Although researchers have studied pharmacist-patient communication for approximately 30 years, little emphasis has been placed on the interactions between pharmacists and Spanish-speaking patients. ⋯ These studies provide a macroscopic look at the linguistic services offered in pharmacies, gaps in services, and their subsequent impact on pharmacists and patients. Future research should investigate Spanish-speaking patients' literacy issues, pharmacy staff language skills, factors that influence pharmacists' counseling, and language-assistance programs for pharmacists and patients. Furthermore, these studies need to be conducted in large Hispanic/Latino populated areas where positive service models are likely to be present. Addressing these issues will provide pharmacists and pharmacies with information to overcome language barriers and provide Spanish-speaking patients with quality care.
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Jun 2009
Comparative StudyA comparison of mail-service and retail community pharmacy claims in 5 prescription benefit plans.
Little evidence has been presented to date that would either support or refute a widely held belief that mail-service pharmacy utilization routinely produces savings in drug benefit costs for prescription benefit plan sponsors. ⋯ Co-payment incentives to use mail-service pharmacies instead of community pharmacies were associated with higher mail-service utilization rates and with higher costs to plan sponsors. Absence of a co-payment incentive to use mail-service pharmacies was associated with lower mail-service utilization rates and with lower costs to plan sponsors.