Cost-effectiveness of professional pharmacy services in community pharmacy: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The aim was to determine whether professional pharmacy services (PPS) provided to ambulatory patients attending community pharmacy are cost-effective compared with usual care (UC).

Areas covered: MEDLINE, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Cochrane Library and Centre for Reviews and Dissemination databases were searched, and the risk of bias of randomized controlled trials, and the methodological quality of economic evaluations was assessed. A total of 17 economic evaluations of 13 studies were included. Seven studies were classified as high-, three as medium- and three as low-quality. PPS were more effective and less costly than UC in four studies; seven studies concluded that PPS were more effective and more costly and two studies concluded that the service was as effective as the UC, with higher and lower costs.

Expert commentary: Although the uncertainty was variable among the studies, a general trend towards the cost-effectiveness of PPS was observed. Decision makers are encouraged to consider the feasibility of implementing PPS.

KEYWORDS:

• Community pharmacy
• cost-effectiveness
• health technology assessment
• pharmacy services
• systematic review

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Education, Culture and Language Policy of the Basque Government under Pre-doctoral Fellowship for Research Personnel in Training to A.M.L.