Atención farmacéutica dual. La gran oportunidad Translated title: Dual pharmaceutical care. The big opportunity

Abstract The use of information and communication technologies have nowadays become part and parcel of hospital pharmacy practice. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that Telepharmacy has sparked the interest of a large number of stakeholders. In this respect, the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy has developed a definition of the concept and outlined the conditions under which Telepharmacy should operate. It has also shared its institutional stance on the subject through a position statement that states that Telepharmacy is the provision of pharmaceutical care at a distance through information and communication technologies. Telepharmacy practice includes activities such as therapeutic validation, drafting of clinical documents, provision of pharmaceutical care, therapeutic follow-up, adherence monitoring, drug education and information, coordination between healthcare providers and evaluation of health outcomes. The clinical tasks performed as part of Telepharmacy practice must adhere to a standardized procedure and revolve around the patient's clinical record. Access to Telepharmacy must be provided without discrimination. The service comprises four main activities: pharmacotherapeutic follow-up; patient and caregiver-directed education and information-dissemination; coordination with healthcare providers from the same or different hospitals; and remote informed home drug delivery. Implementation of Telepharmacy requires an adjustment of human (training and capacity-building) and technological resources (validation, interoperability, confidentiality). It must also comply with the laws and regulations in force both at a regional and a national level. Telepharmacy procedures must also be adapted to the relevant ethical standards and codes of good practice. Appropriate indicators must be used to evaluate the performance of Telepharmacy and its impact on health outcomes. According to Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy Telepharmacy is a necessary complementary tool to provide specialized pharmaceutical care and thereby improve health outcomes and maximize patient safety and satisfaction.

Background Telepharmacy, as a remote pharmaceutical care procedure, is being used worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of preserving the health of patients and professionals. Its future development should incorporate the assessment of patient perception, but no research study has investigated it. Objective The objective was to poll the opinions and experiences of outpatients with telepharmacy through a purpose-developed questionnaire and to assess it’s quality through an internal validity and reliability analysis. Methods Cross-sectional observational study of adult patients who used telepharmacy services during the COVID-19 lockdown period in Spain. The subjects answered a 24-item questionnaire, after giving their informed consent. Place of delivery, informed pharmacotherapeutic follow-up, opinion about telepharmacy, future development, ethics/satisfaction, and coordination constituted the six questionnaire categories. After assessing the adequate sample size with the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test, the Bartlett sphericity test analyzed the validity of the questionnaire. The intraclass correlation coefficient and Cronbach’s α coefficient calculations verified the reliability and internal consistency. Results A total of 9442 interviews were administered to patients from 81 hospitals, of which 8079 were valid (52.8% female). A 54.1% were aged between 41–65 years; 42.7% had been in treatment for more than 5 years; 42.8% lived between 6–31 miles from the hospital. As many as 96.7% of patients were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with telepharmacy, 97.5% considering it complementary to their usual follow-up; 55.9% expressed a preference for being followed up face to face when visiting the hospital. 75.6% said they had rather receive their medication at home. The sample size obtained was deemed appropriate [the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test (0.789) and Bartlett’s sphericity test (p<0.005)]. The reliability analysis resulted in a Cronbach α = 0.7. Conclusion Patients have shown high satisfaction with telepharmacy and the ENOPEX questionnaire is a tool with sufficient validity and reliability to be used in the evaluation of the care that patients receive through telepharmacy.