Impact of community pharmacy automation on workflow, workload, and patient interaction

Objective: To compare workload productivity, workflow efficiency, and pharmacist-patient interaction in automated and nonautomated community pharmacies. Design: Observational study. Setting: Four community pharmacy sites within a regional pharmacy chain. Study Participants: 173 patients and 11 pharmacists. Interventions: Patient surveys, pharmacist surveys, and direct observation. Main Outcome Measures: Patient satisfaction, frequency of pharmacist-patient interactions, and prescription dispensing productivity and efficiency. Results: Results from the three nonautomated pharmacies were averaged and compared with results from the automated pharmacy. Patient satisfaction was generally favorable for both automated and nonautomated pharmacies, but scores for the automated site were significantly better on items measuring one domain, technical competence of pharmacy staff. No association was found between patient counseling and prescription workload in automated or nonautomated sites. Personnel at the automated site made significantly more offers to counsel patients, but the number of patients who received counseling did not differ significantly. Automation was associated with a higher number of prescriptions dispensed per full-time equivalent pharmacist and fewer technical dispensing tasks performed by pharmacists. Conclusion: Patient satisfaction was not related to the presence of an automated dispensing system. Automation was associated with higher prescription productivity, but actual counseling rates were no different from those observed in nonautomated pharmacies. The likelihood that a patient would receive counseling was not related to staffing levels, automation, or workload. Whether counseling occurred appeared to depend on factors other than automation.