Jeroen van de Pol

148 Chapter 5.2 Table 4: Overview of background characteristics of each class. Percentages not cumulating to 100% indicate missing values. P-values calculated using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Background characteristic Class 1 (N=840) Class 2 (N=333) Class 3 (N=404) Class 4 (N=885) p-value Gender, % (N) • Male • Female 54.1 (454) 45.7 (384) 55.9 (186) 44.1 (147) 63.4 (256) 36.1 (146) 49.4 (437) 50.3 (445) < 0.001 Age, mean (SD) 63.7 (11.3) 68.3 (9.3) 66.0 (11.2) 65.3 (10.4) 0.683 Number of drugs in use, mean (SD) 4.4 (3.1) 4.7 (3.0) 4.6 (3.8) 4.6 (3.3) 0.138 Educational level, % (N) • Low • Middle • High 18.7 (156) 37.5 (312) 43.8 (365) 21.8 (72) 36.9 (122) 41.4 (137) 22.4 (89) 32.5 (129) 45.1 (179) 24.1 (209) 37.4 (325) 38.5 (334) 0.091 Urbanization, % (N) • (Strongly) urbanized • Slightly urbanized • (Strongly) rural 46.4 (388) 24.0 (200) 29.6 (247) 49.0 (160) 20.9 (68) 30.1 (98) 49.2 (194) 17.8 (70) 33.0 (130) 46.4 (403) 19.7 (171) 33.9 (295) 0.056 Pharmacy visits frequency, % (N) • Daily - weekly • Monthly – quarterly • Yearly – never 5.2 (44) 90.8 (762) 4.0 (34) 6.0 (20) 89.8 (299) 4.2 (14) 4.5 (18) 90.4 (365) 5.1 (21) 4.3 (38) 91.7 (811) 4.0 (36) 0.817 Grade for current community pharmacy, mean (SD) 8.0 (1.1) 8.0 (1.1) 8.0 (1.3) 8.0 (1.2) 0.508 Views community pharmacist as healthcare provider, % (N) • Agree • Disagree 86.6 (727) 13.4 (113) 82.9 (276) 17.1 (57) 84.2 (340) 15.8 (64) 89.3 (790) 10.7 (95) 0.022 Discussion This study shows that differences regarding preferences for community pharmacy services exist within the population of chronic medication users. A total of four different patient classes can be distinguished, with some classes having a preference for convenience related services whereas others prefer CPS. Class 1 (n=822, 33.4%) contains mostly participants that highly prefer convenience related services, predominantly access to online medication records and to a lesser degree online communication options with the community pharmacy team and track and trace of the dispensing process. This is in accordance with results from an earlier study, as it also found a large proportion of participants preferring convenience over CPS [10]. However, this study population differs from participants in the previous study [10] with this study including more elderly and a larger proportion of people with a lower educational level.