Affiliations 

  • 1 Hospital Miri
MyJurnal

Abstract

The Pharmacy value-added services (PVAS) has been implemented in Malaysian public hospitals to facilitate the collection of follow-up medications. In specific, PVAS include Integrated Drug Dispensing System, Medicine by Post, Drive-Through Pharmacy, and many more. While past studies examined the satisfaction towards PVAS and its impact on patients’ waiting time, little explored the awareness and the experience of patients towards each type of PVAS. This study aims to explore the patient’s awareness on PVAS, adoption of PVAS, their satisfaction towards PVAS, and willingness to adopt PVAS. This was a cross-sectional study conducted in January 2020. We invited the eligible patients or their family members to participate in the study. Respondents recruited at the Outpatient Pharmacy Department of Miri Hospital using convenient sampling. A questionnaire in the Malay language was developed and content validated to gather information on the demographic data, awareness on PVAS, adoption of PVAS, satisfaction towards PVAS, and willingness to adopt PVAS. A list of PVAS was included for the respondents to select the types they were aware of and used before. Results were presented as frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. A total of 398 respondents participated in the study. Majority of the respondents (70.1%) were aware that PVAS offered in Miri Hospital. However, about a third of the respondents (31.4%) had experience using PVAS. The most commonly used PVAS was Appointment Card Dispensing System (49.6%) and that with the least usage was Local Partial Medication Supply Service (2.4%). The Drive-Through Pharmacy has the greatest satisfaction score, 4.40 (SD=0.70), whereas Call-and-Collect Service was the least satisfied, 3.88 (SD=0.91). Majority of the respondents (86.2%), specifically 95.8% of the experienced PVAS user and 90.1% of inexperienced group, were willing to adopt PVAS to collect their follow-up medications. The Drive-thru Pharmacy, which has the greatest awareness and satisfaction yet low usage, should be further promoted for greater adoption. Besides, such PVAS should be expanded to other healthcare facilities.