Characteristics of unmet demand for pharmacists: a survey of rural community pharmacies in Wisconsin.

Objectives: To measure and describe the level of unmet demand for pharmacists in rural Wisconsin community pharmacies and to examine determinants of the level of unmet demand in these pharmacies.
Design: Cross-sectional descriptive study.
Setting: Community pharmacies (n = 279) located in rural Wisconsin counties in fall 2005.
Participants: Key informants (managers/owners) identified for all sampled pharmacies.
Interventions: A one-page participation form and an eight-page survey instrument were used to collect primary data about the level of unmet demand for pharmacists and internal pharmacy factors. Secondary data sources were used to extract information on external pharmacy factors.
Main Outcome Measures: Presence of pharmacist vacancy, number of full-time equivalent (FTE) pharmacist positions vacant, and vacancy rate. Internal pharmacy characteristics included wage, prescription volume, prescription workload/pharmacist, dispensing-aiding technologies, technicians per pharmacist, practice setting, pharmacist FTE requirement, and pharmacist satisfaction. External pharmacy characteristics included population per pharmacy, seniors per pharmacy, per capita income, and rurality. The internal and external pharmacy characteristics were regressed on whether a vacancy was present and the vacancy rate (percentage of pharmacist FTEs unfilled).
Results: Overall response rate to the survey was 43.9%. One-third of the respondent pharmacy sites reported a pharmacist vacancy, most often 1.0 or less FTE. Pharmacist FTE requirement had a significant positive association with the presence of any pharmacist vacancy at a site. Prescription workload per pharmacist was positively related to the vacancy rate, while daily prescription volume and pharmacist satisfaction were negatively related to the vacancy rate.
Conclusion: Overall, for rural community pharmacies in Wisconsin, a greater need for pharmacists at a site appears to make that site more likely to have a pharmacist vacancy. Pharmacist vacancies appear to have a greater impact on pharmacies that have a lower number of FTE pharmacist positions compared with pharmacies with higher FTE pharmacists because, potentially, fewer pharmacists are present to redistribute the workload.