With approximately 300 prescriptions dispensed per day in a typical community pharmacy,\nseveral activities take place to ensure the safe dispensing of medicines. While some of these activities\nare common for all prescriptions, others need further activities such as prescription clarification.\nThese activities are important to avoid any potential harm to the patient and improve medication\nadherence. The objective of this study was to measure the impact of these additional dispensing\nservices in a community pharmacy by evaluating the documented patient notes. Two-hundred patients\nwith annotations on their profiles between 1 July and 31 August 2018 were randomly selected and\n322 notes were analyzed. The average number of notes per patient was 1.6. The majority of the notes\nwere about contacting the patient/caregiver for prescription clarification (86.8%). When analyzed\nbased on Medication Therapy Problems, 54.7% were related to adherence and 35.4% to safety.\nUsing the cost saving estimate from the literature for each averted adverse event, these activities\nresulted in a minimum cost saving of $10,458. This study was able to show the positive impacts that\neveryday dispensing services in an independent community pharmacy have on ensuring the safe use\nof medication, thus potentially preventing adverse drug events and reducing health care costs.
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