Investigation of patients' demand for community pharmacies: Relationship between pharmacy services and patient satisfaction

We performed an investigation on the patients' demand for community pharmacy based on the analysis of questionnaire responses on community pharmacy services from the patients at 32 pharmacies in Tokyo and Osaka. In the previous study, we developed seven evaluation indices for pharmacy services, and showed that the functions most sought by patients in the "ideal pharmacies" were "Attitude of pharmacy/pharmacist", "Convenient hours" and "Information management". The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between these pharmacy functions and patient satisfaction by analyzing responses from the same questionnaire survey. Overall satisfaction score with the "pharmacy used today" was employed as the dependent variable, while the six factors derived from the 26-item evaluation scale in the questionnaire by factor analysis were used as the independent variables. As a result of analysis, it was found that four variables had a significant positive correlation with patient satisfaction, one had a significant inverse correlation, and one showed no significant correlation (p<0.05). These results suggest that: attitude of the pharmacists such as general attitude and specialized activities of pharmacy/pharmacist such as providing information and explanations, and convenience of hours are not only judged to be important by patients, but also influence their satisfaction; comfortable facilities and availability of OTC drugs, while rated relatively low by patients in terms of importance, do influence their satisfaction; and convenience of location does not influence patient satisfaction. It was also indicated that insufficient inventories of prescribed medications have an impact upon patient satisfaction. This investigation offers evidence to provide patient-based pharmacy services.