Perceived sustainability of community telepharmacy in North Dakota.

Objectives: To assess the sustainability of the business model underlying the North Dakota Telepharmacy Project (NDTP).

Setting: Of the 38 community pharmacy organizations (14 central, 24 remote), 27 organizations (11 central and 16 remote sites) in North Dakota provided a useable set of responses (71.1% response rate).

Differences in medication errors between central and remote site telepharmacies.

Objective: To examine differences in dispensing errors within community telepharmacy practices by comparing error rates across central sites (community telepharmacy sites with pharmacists present) and the corresponding remote sites, which are staffed by registered technicians and overseen by the central site pharmacist.

Design: Cross-sectional pilot study with a test group (remote sites) and comparison group (central sites).

Setting: 24 rural community telepharmacies (14 remote sites and 10 central sites).

Interprofessional education in introductory pharmacy practice experiences at US colleges and schools of pharmacy.

Objective: To assess the extent to which US colleges and schools of pharmacy are incorporating interprofessional education into their introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs), and to identify barriers to implementation; characterize the format, structure, and assessment; and identify factors associated with incorporating interprofessional education in IPPEs.

Methods: An electronic survey of 116 US colleges and schools of pharmacy was conducted from March 2011 through May 2011.

Results: Interprofessional education is a stated curricular goal in 78% of colleges and schools and consistently occurred in IPPEs in 55%.

Do remote community telepharmacies have higher medication error rates than traditional community pharmacies? Evidence from the North Dakota Telepharmacy Project.

Objective: To evaluate the differences in medication dispensing errors between remote telepharmacy sites (pharmacist not physically present) and standard community pharmacy sites (pharmacist physically present and no telepharmacy technology; comparison group).

Design: Pilot, cross-sectional, comparison study.

Setting: North Dakota from January 2005 to September 2008.

Is there a successful business case for telepharmacy?

The purpose of this study was to assess the financial operation of a Single Business Unit (SBU), consisting of one central retail pharmacy and two remote retail telepharmacies. Analyses of income statements and balance sheets for three consecutive years (2002-2004) were conducted. Several items from these statements were compared to the industry average.