Measuring Patient Satisfaction With Medication Management Programs

Measuring the quality and sustainability of comprehensive medication management (CMM) services is important, and patient satisfaction is a key component for measuring the quality of CMM services; however, pharmacy as a profession has been impeded by a lack of reliable tools to assess patient satisfaction with the quality of CMM services.

Jean Moon, PharmD, BCACP, of the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, and colleagues developed a psychometrically valid questionnaire for measuring patient satisfaction with CMM services, and they described this tool and its validity and reliability in a study published in the January 2016 issue of the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy.

“Without appropriate patient satisfaction measures demonstrating value, pharmacists can be at a disadvantage when requesting reimbursement for these clinical services,” the authors wrote.

CMM programs are designed to ensure that each patient’s medications are individually assessed so that each medication is appropriate for the patient, effective for the medical condition, safe given the comorbidities and other medications being taken, and able to be taken by the patient as intended. CMM also includes an individualized care plan outlining the intended goals of therapy and the appropriate follow-up to determine actual patient outcomes.

Dr Moon and co-workers developed the survey tool with collaborative input from administrators, practitioners, patients, students, pharmacists, university faculty, and a health literacy committee and a multiphase development process. Validation studies were conducted across 2 urban ambulatory care health system settings providing CMM services. The survey consisted of 10 items related to 3 domains: medication-related needs, pharmacist-patient engagement, and overall satisfaction. The surveys were mailed, collected, and analyzed for descriptive statistics, internal consistency, and factorial composition.

A total of 195 surveys were returned for analysis (survey response rate, 19.2%). The survey items were found to have high internal consistency and were considered highly reliable in the 2 different health systems addressed. The instrument was relatively simple to administer, the researchers stated, and they recommended additional analysis to evaluate the survey instrument as a measure of quality assurance across additional programs.

“Patient satisfaction is an integral part of measuring a quality service, and this tool may serve other programs following the industry standard CMM model with a reliable mechanism to assess and compare performance,” the authors concluded.