Pharmacy quality alliance: Five phase I demonstration projects: Descriptions and lessons learned

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the five Phase I Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) demonstration projects and discuss lessons learned across the projects. Design: Descriptive nonexperimental study. Setting: United States from July 2008 to November 2009. Participants: Community pharmacies from five states. Intervention: Pharmacies viewed their performance scores on a reporting website and provided feedback. Main outcomes measures: Pharmacy performance scores and pharmacist feedback about the scores and reporting websites. Results: Considerable variation was found in the pharmacy performance scores. Some pharmacies did not have enough patients taking medications that were included in specific performance measures. Use of a website to report pharmacy performance was feasible across several different approaches. PQA has developed measures of pharmacy performance that can be used in programs intended to report pharmacy performance. Conclusion: It is feasible to calculate pharmacy performance scores and create Web-based pharmacy performance reports to provide feedback to community pharmacists. Further development of pharmacy performance reporting should occur.