Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: California is 1 of 4 states currently permitting-but not requiring-pharmacists to prescribe contraception. 1 Since April 2016, patients can obtain hormonal contraceptive pills, injections, rings, and patches in California pharmacies offering this service.2 After patients complete a health questionnaire (and, for combined hormonal contraception, a blood pressure reading), trained pharmacists determine medical eligibility for methods, conduct counseling, and prescribe contraception. 2 Although insurers are not required to reimburse pharmacies for this clinical service, pharmacies may charge patients fees.3 To date, the extent to which pharmacies are making pharmacist-prescribed contraception available under these nascent policies has not been estimated; this study does so at 1 year after implementation began in California.Methods | The Office for Protection of Human Subjects at the University of California, Berkeley, deemed this study to be nonhuman subjects research.A telephone audit study of a representative sample of California pharmacies was conducted between February 2017 and April 2017.A list of all licensed pharmacies (n = 7048) was obtained from the California State Board of Pharmacy in October 2016.Hospital, clinic, university, and specialty and other non-full-service pharmacies (eg, long-term care, mail order) were identified and excluded.A random sample of 20% of included pharmacies was usedstratified by urbanity (census tract designation) and pharmacy type (retail chain or independent, defined as <5 locations).With a power level of 0.85 and an α of .05, the minimum sample size required to detect an effect size of 0.1 in χ 2 tests of independence comparing availability of pharmacistprescribed contraception by urbanity or pharmacy type was 898.
Source: JAMA
Author: Anu Manchikanti Gomez
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2771544779