Community pharmacists reveal preferences in content, method of TOC communication

Transition of care (TOC) communication is very much needed, according to community pharmacists who also shared their preferences in the content and method of communication in a recent study.

To determine preferences in TOC communications, this cross-sectional study gathered data by means of an electronic survey of community pharmacists. The North Carolina Board of Pharmacy distributed the survey. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the results.

A total of 343 community pharmacists responded to the electronic survey (response rate, 6.1 percent). Most of the respondents were working in an independent, single store (n=100; 29.2 percent) or national chain (n=100; 29.2 percent) pharmacy setting.

Via electronic health record was the most preferred method for a TOC communication (n=184; 63.0 percent). The commonly preferred contents of a TOC communication were as follows: active (n=274; 93.2 percent) and discontinued (n=254; 86.4 percent) medications and reason for hospitalization (n=250; 85.0 percent).

Lack of care coordination with community pharmacy (n=14; 35.0 percent), lack of support from other healthcare providers (n=9; 22.5 percent) and absence of compensation for providing the service (n=7; 17.5 percent) were the top three self-identified barriers to using a TOC communication.

In addition, most of the respondents (n=278; 97.5 percent) indicated that TOC communications would be useful if these were made available to them.

“Future research is warranted to implement TOC communications between a health system and community pharmacy,” the investigators said.