Improving Collaboration between Primary Care Providers and Community Pharmacists: A CrossSectional Survey

Abstract Introduction: Community pharmacists are highly trained and accessible health professionals. Over 95% of the US public is within 10 miles of a community pharmacy. This study characterizes current community pharmacist-primary care provider (PCP) communications, and PCP perspectives on establishing medication-related services and collaborative practice agreements (CPAs) with community pharmacists to improve public health. Methods: PCPs responded to an online, cross-sectional survey from December 2020 to January 2021. Results: Of 222 PCP respondents, nearly 50% of PCPs or staff members communicated weekly with community pharmacists about prescriptions, and 66% of PCPs were not aware of community pharmacists' capabilities to monitor and manage medications. Only 31% of PCPs were aware that community pharmacists use Collaborative Practice Agreements (CPA). PCPs with less than 16 years of practice experience agreed that community pharmacists working with a CPA could decrease their clinical workload burden. Facilitators of PCP support for community pharmacists providing medication monitoring and management services included positive patient feedback, patient outcome improvement, and patient perception of the community pharmacist as a primary care team member. PCP perceived barriers were the lack of PCP knowledge of community pharmacist clinical training, no dedicated pharmacist time to provide direct patient care services, minimal pharmacist experience in providing medication monitoring and management, and poor documentation of community pharmacist services in electronic health records. Conclusion: Opportunities exist for greater community pharmacist-PCP collaboration to improve chronic disease patient outcomes. Given their public accessibility, community pharmacist medication monitoring and management services should be considered to improve public health.