Patient care services in rural Minnesota community pharmacies

Objective: To compare the availability of medication therapy management (MTM) services, point-of-care (POC) testing, and disease management resources between rural and urban Minnesota community pharmacies. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Minnesota in 2006. Participants: Owners and operational managers of 564 Minnesota community pharmacies. Intervention: Mail survey containing structured, quantitative questions. Resulting data were separated to evaluate urban and rural area community pharmacies. Main outcome measures: Staffing trends, MTM services, and patient care services of urban compared with rural community pharmacies in Minnesota. Results: Urban and rural pharmacies reported allocating nearly the same percent of a typical day to filling and dispensing prescriptions (∼70%). A higher percent of rural community pharmacies offered patient care services in 5 of 15 categories, including drug information services (55.7% vs. 45.6%), provision of durable medical equipment (43.4% vs. 32.6%), dyslipidemia management (7.8% vs. 3.8%), hypertension management (14.6%% vs. 7.3%), and MTM (29.4% vs. 18.7%). Conclusion: Although the time allocated to dispensing medication was approximately 70% for both urban and rural pharmacies, a significantly higher proportion of rural pharmacies reported providing MTM and other direct patient care services. This may be a result of geographic isolation and greater use of pharmacists as providers of first-contact care in these areas.