Telepharmacy and Quality of Medication Use in Rural Areas, 2013–2019

Details

• Journal Article:
  Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
• Personal Author:
  Pathak, Shweta ; Haynes, Mitchell ; Qato, Dima M. ; Urick, Benjamin Y.
• Description:
  Introduction
  
  Pharmacy closures in rural areas is an increasingly common problem. Closures disrupt medication access and decrease adherence to prescription medications. Tele pharmacy is a potential solution to this problem; however, research on the relationship between tele pharmacy and the quality of medication use is scarce. Our study sought to address this gap by comparing the quality of tele pharmacies serving rural areas and traditional pharmacies that support them.
  
  Methods
  
  We obtained dispensing data for the first 18 months of operation from 3 tele pharmacies and 3 traditional pharmacies located in the upper Midwest. We evaluated adherence for noninsulin diabetes medications, renin-angiotensin system antagonists, and statins, as well as inappropriate use of high-risk medications in older adults and statin use in persons with diabetes. All metrics were calculated using Medicare Part D specifications. We estimated the differences between tele pharmacies serving rural areas and traditional pharmacies using generalized linear regression. We adjusted our models for potential sociodemographic and clinical confounders.
  
  Results
  
  A total of 2,832 patients contributed 4,402 observations to the quality measures. After covariate adjustment, we observed no significant differences between tele pharmacies and traditional pharmacies for noninsulin diabetes medications, renin-angiotensin system antagonists, statins, and high-risk medications. However, statin use in persons with diabetes was higher in tele pharmacies than traditional pharmacies.
  
  Conclusion
  
  We found that the quality of medication use at tele pharmacies that serve rural areas was no worse than at traditional pharmacies. For communities considering the adoption of tele pharmacy, results indicate that tele pharmacies provide a suitable solution for expanding medication access and that using tele pharmacy would not negatively affect the quality of medication use.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Original Research
• Source:
  Prev Chronic Dis. 2020; 17
• ISSN:
  1545-1151
• Pubmed ID:
  32886060
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7478153
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Volume:
  17
• Collection(s):
  Preventing Chronic Disease
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:b080bd608bb4522b185b5e8890df743ca1dc09343a8994af3b5516137ec76082ca012cf874107d6dd2de2c69f4a0cc82157ec7ad32176f2b737f44c096605685
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/93949/cdc_93949_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 442.09 KB ]