User testing and performance evaluation of the Electronic Quality Improvement Platform for Plans and Pharmacies.

Objective: To user-test and evaluate a performance information management platform that makes standardized, benchmarked medication use quality data available to both health plans and community pharmacy organizations.

Setting: Multiple health/drug plans and multiple chain and independent pharmacies across the United States.

Evaluation: During the first phase of the study, user experience was measured via user satisfaction surveys and interviews with key personnel (pharmacists, pharmacy leaders, and health plan leadership).

The Pennsylvania Project: pharmacist intervention improved medication adherence and reduced health care costs.

Improving medication adherence across the health care system is an ingredient that is vital to improving patient outcomes and reducing downstream health care costs. The Pennsylvania Project, a large-scale community pharmacy demonstration study, evaluated the impact of a pharmacy-based intervention on adherence to five chronic medication classes. To implement the study, 283 pharmacists from a national community pharmacy chain were assigned to the intervention group.

Case study of the effects of office-based generic drug sampling on antibiotic drug costs and first-line antibiotic prescribing ratios.

Background: Health plans and members benefit from the substitution of lower-cost drug therapies that achieve the same clinical outcomes as higher-cost drugs. Previous research suggests that generic sampling programs produce drug cost savings overall, but the effects attributable to acute therapies are unknown. Encouraging physicians to prescribe less expensive, first-line antibiotics may help reduce direct drug costs associated with prescribing potentially unnecessary, and more expensive, second-line agents.

Job turnover intentions among pharmacy faculty.

Objectives: To determine the primary reasons why pharmacy faculty intend to remain or leave their current institution and why they left their most recent academic institution, and the relative contribution of various organizational and individual characteristics toward explaining variance in turnover intentions.

Methods: A survey instrument was e-mailed to pharmacy faculty members asking respondents to indicate up to 5 reasons for their intentions and up to 5 reasons why they left a previous institution. The survey also elicited perceptions on quality of work life in addition to demographic and institutional data, upon which turnover intentions were regressed using a forward-conditional procedure.

Development of a multidimensional scale to measure work satisfaction among pharmacy faculty members.

Objectives: To develop a multidimensional scale to measure work satisfaction among pharmacy faculty members and determine its reliability and validity.

Methods: A literature review was used to assist in the generation of 36 statements that putatively comprise the satisfaction construct. The 25 items meeting a priori criteria in a modified Delphi procedure were included in a questionnaire sent by e-mail to 4,228 pharmacy faculty members.