A Consumer Assessment of Pharmaceutical Care Services in a Diabetes Ambulatory Clinic

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To assess patients’ satisfaction with pharmaceutical care services provided in a community health center diabetes management clinic. METHODS: Patients who received diabetes-related pharmaceutical services from the clinical pharmacist at El Rio Health Center in Tucson, Arizona from November 2008 to January 2009 were contacted during a visit to the diabetes clinic and asked to complete the consumer assessment of pharmaceutical services questionnaire. The questionnaire included 14 likert-type items with response options ranging from “Never” to “Always” or “Disagree” to “Agree.” In addition, the patient’s most recent hemoglobin A1C (HgbA1C) was obtained from the electronic medical record. The survey instrument was also translated from English to Spanish to serve the Hispanic participants who could not communicate fluently in English. A descriptive cross-sectional analysis was completed in order to assess patient satisfaction. Dependent variables extracted from the survey were analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test. Interval and ratio data were analyzed by calculating means, standard deviations, and an independent t-test. Nominal data were analyzed using the Chi-Square test. RESULTS: A total of 46 patients completed the questionnaires, including 17 men and 29 women (mean age = 56, SD = 11.3, 80% Hispanic). All patients had seen the clinical pharmacist at least 3 times. Overall, this study showed that majority of the patients were satisfied with the service provided in the clinic. There was no statistically significant difference between English and Spanish patient populations in terms of satisfaction with pharmaceutical services provided about their disease management. CONCLUSIONS: Patients in this clinic were highly satisfied with the pharmaceutical care services provided by the clinical pharmacist.