Patient Care in Community Pharmacies during the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) Pandemic: Effectiveness of Post-Graduate Education and Further Training Courses on Revenues

Francesca Baratta (), Elena Folpini, Michele Ciccolella and Paola Brusa
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Francesca Baratta: Department of Drug Science and Technology, University of Turin, Via Pietro Giuria 9, 10125 Turin, Italy
Elena Folpini: New Line Ricerche di Mercato, Via Riccardo Lombardi 19/10, 20153 Milano, Italy
Michele Ciccolella: FarmaHiSkill Italia, Via Guelfa 5, 40138 Bologna, Italy
Paola Brusa: Department of Drug Science and Technology, University of Turin, Via Pietro Giuria 9, 10125 Turin, Italy

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-8

Abstract: Thanks to their distribution throughout the territory and extended opening hours, community pharmacists are among the healthcare specialists most easily accessible to the public and often represent the first point of consultation both for the treatment of acute health conditions and, more generally, for health and therapy advice. The objective of the present study was to evaluate whether post-graduate courses/further training courses for pharmacists might influence the quality of patient management and care and, consequently, the satisfaction of the users who entered the pharmacy. We used the revenues of the pharmacies (Group A) in which these pharmacists are employed as a performance indicator. We compared the data for this group with the national averages for Italian pharmacies (Group B) and with those of a group (Group C) of selected pharmacies as similar as possible to the pharmacies in Group A based on a number of well-defined parameters. The comparison of revenues, year-on-year changes, and the average number of sales by the pharmacies in the three groups indicates that the pharmacies in Group A had the best performance, not only when compared with the national average but especially compared with the control group, specifically selected to make the comparison as significant as possible.

Keywords: community pharmacies; pharmacists; COVID–19; SARS-CoV-2; Italy; education; training courses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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