Current Situation and Challenges of Community-pharmacist-led Follow-up of Patients: A Cross-sectional Questionnaire Survey at Community Pharmacies

<p>The implementation of community pharmacist-led follow-up of patients after dispensing drugs has been accelerating due to the enforcement of the revised Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act and the revised Pharmacist Act in 2020. This study aimed to clarify the current situation and challenges of such follow-up. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted for pharmacists at community pharmacies, focusing on the current status and challenges of pharmacist-led follow-up. Follow-up cases that contributed to patient medication were also collected in the survey. Responses were obtained from 318 pharmacists in 34 prefectures throughout Japan. Follow-up was conducted by 283 pharmacies (89％) using phone calls (99％) and apps (12％). An analysis of 265 cases found that follow-up was generally conducted not only for patients with diabetes, respiratory disease, and cancer, but also for patients with other diseases. Pharmacist-led follow-up actions included monitoring of adverse drug reactions and effects associated with new prescriptions and prescription changes, confirming compliance of patients taking drugs with special dosages, and patient adherence to medication, etc. Respondents stated that the main challenges for implementation of follow-up were refusal of follow-up by patients, difficulty in follow-up by phone, inexperience of pharmacists, and insufficient pharmacy environments for follow-up. Text analysis showed that barriers to follow-up differed depending on how satisfied responding pharmacies were with their follow-up performance. Therefore, to make community pharmacist-led follow-up more effective, it is important to identify factors that inhibit and promote follow-up for each pharmacy and to take appropriate measures based on them.</p>