Expectations of general practitioners and pharmacists regarding health data communication: a cross-sectional survey in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation

Objective

This study aims to explore the expectations of pharmacists and general practitioners (GPs) regarding the exchange of medi­cal data via health networks.

Methodology

A quantitative questionnaire study was conducted among pharmacists and general practitioners in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results

The questionnaire yielded a sample of 609 people. Overall, 83% of GPs wanted access to the medication dispensing history, 93% of pharmacists wanted to access the full Summarized Electronic Health Record (SUMEHR), and 62% of GPs favored sharing this SUMEHR with the pharmacists believing it would improve their collaboration and treatment control. However, less than 10% of GPs agreed with sharing more sensitive data such as medical reports or biological results, while 64% of doctors believed the indication for treatment should be shared with pharmacists on an optional basis. More than 70% of GPs and pharmacists preferred to use specific communication tools between themselves.

Conclusion

GPs and pharmacists are looking for health networks to facilitate communication, health data exchange, and access to medication history and patterns. Their underuse can be partially explained by insufficient knowledge of the tools, difficulty of access, bugs, respect for privacy, non-implementation of the tools in business software, time-consuming encoding and fear of judgment of drug prescriptions, or the transfer of the GP’s role to the pharmacist.

What is already known about the topic?

The importance of the collaboration between GPs and pharmacists has been highlighted in several studies. This is particu­larly true in the management of patients suffering from one or more chronic diseases, and polypharmacy. In Belgium, health networks are developing and various shared communication tools tend to improve the sharing of health data among care providers. Nevertheless, there are still several obstacles in the way of collaboration.

What does this article bring up for us?

This study aims to explore the expectations of pharmacists and GPs on exchanging medical data through health networks. Situations for which there is a desire to communicate, communication tools, and types of data to be shared are also discussed.

Keywords

Health data, networks, communication, general practitioners, pharmacists