Pharmacy Customers’ Experiences With Electronic Prescriptions: Cross-Sectional Survey on Nationwide Implementation in Finland

Abstract

BackgroundOne of the forerunners in electronic health, Finland has introduced electronic prescriptions (ePrescriptions) nationwide by law. This has led to significant changes for pharmacy customers. Despite the worldwide ambition to develop ePrescription services, there are few reports of nationally adopted systems and particularly on the experiences of pharmacy customers.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate Finnish pharmacy customers’ (1) experiences with purchasing medicines with ePrescriptions; (2) experiences with renewing ePrescriptions and acting on behalf of someone else at the pharmacy; (3) ways in which customers keep up to date with their ePrescriptions; and (4) overall satisfaction with ePrescriptions.MethodsQuestionnaires were distributed to 2913 pharmacy customers aged ≥18 years purchasing prescription medicines for themselves with an ePrescription in 18 community pharmacies across Finland in autumn 2015. Customers’ experiences were explored with 10 structured questions. The data were stored in SPSS for Windows and subjected to descriptive analysis, chi-square, Fisher exact, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, the Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal-Wallis tests.ResultsCompleted questionnaires were returned by 1288 customers, a response rate of 44.19% (1288/2913). The majority of the respondents did not encounter any problems during pharmacy visits (1161/1278, 90.85%) and were informed about the current status of their ePrescriptions after their medication was dispensed (1013/1276, 79.44%). Over half of the respondents had usually received a patient instruction sheet from their physician (752/1255, 59.92%), and nearly all of them regarded its content as clear (711/724, 98.2%). Half of the respondents had renewed their ePrescriptions through the pharmacy (645/1281, 50.35%), and one-third of them had acted on behalf of someone else with ePrescriptions (432/1280, 33.75%). Problems were rarely encountered in the renewal process (49/628, 7.8%) or when acting on behalf of another person (25/418, 6.0%) at the pharmacy. The most common way of keeping up to date with ePrescriptions was to ask at the pharmacy (631/1278, 49.37%). The vast majority of the respondents were satisfied with ePrescriptions as a whole (1221/1274, 95.84%).ConclusionsFinnish pharmacy customers are satisfied with the recently implemented nationwide ePrescription system. They seldom have any difficulties purchasing medicines, renewing their ePrescriptions, or acting on behalf of someone else at the pharmacy. Customers usually keep up to date with their ePrescriptions by asking at the pharmacy. However, some customers are unaware of the practices or have difficulty keeping up to date with the status of their ePrescriptions. The provision of relevant information and assistance by health care professionals is therefore required to promote customers’ adoption of the ePrescription system.

Reasons for allowing and refusing generic substitution and factors determining the choice of an interchangeable prescription medicine: a survey among pharmacy customers in Finland

“…This may result from the fact that women and older people tend to respond to surveys more than men and younger adults [49,50]. However, our study respondents' current use of prescription medicines, gender and age distributions were similar to those of earlier Finnish studies conducted among pharmacy customers with similar methods [7,31]. Accordingly, we suggest that the findings of this study can be generalized, with caution, to customers purchasing their prescription medicines at Finnish community pharmacies.…”

“…Reminders could not be sent because customers were recruited anonymously. A similar method has been successfully used in a few earlier studies targeted at Finnish pharmacy customers [7,30,31].…”

Half of the Finnish population accessed their own data: comprehensive access to personal health information online is a corner-stone of digital revolution in Finnish health and social care

“…Since January 2017, all healthcare providers are obliged to use the eprescription system [35]. Community pharmacy customers are familiar and very satisfied with the national service [36,37], and general practitioners report that eprescribing has improved their patient medication management [38,39]. Finnish health professionals have positive expectations about the PAEHR [40].…”

Information received and information needed on electronic prescriptions - Finnish pharmacy customers' experiences during the nationwide implementation

“…The implementation of e‐prescriptions has been widely studied from the perspectives of healthcare professionals, but less from the other main user group, patients . Studies surveying patients’ experiences have focused on their perceptions of e‐prescriptions, experiences with visiting the pharmacy, experiences with using an online service for viewing e‐prescriptions and satisfaction with the system …”

“…Patients’ experiences with e‐prescriptions have been very positive and they rarely encounter any problems with them . Despite this, however, a Swedish survey found that medicine users had only limited knowledge of the nationwide e‐prescription services .…”