IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE SERVICE OFFERED BY THE COMMUNITY PHARMACIES IN EGYPT.

• Author: El Khouly, Sayed

INTRODUCTION

The pharmacy has an important social as well as a functional role within an integrated health care system. Efforts to improve public health can be performed by a pharmacist in a pharmacy by applying the concept of pharmaceutical services (Villako & Raal, 2007).

Although pharmacy services are an integral part of a health care system, there is limited research regarding service quality in this field. Traditionally, health care professionals, including community pharmacists, have been regarded by the public as delivering unquestioned services (Westerlund & Bjork, 2006). Patient satisfaction is an important measure of how well services are provided (Kukukarslan & Schommer, 2002).

Service quality can have a significant effect on patient satisfaction. Generally, the factors that influence the concept of patient satisfaction, as seen from the patients' perspective, are primary important. Other perspectives, such as those of health care professionals, are of lesser value (Fridlund, 2002)

During the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine period, there was a surge health care services and most hospitals and health care professionals were highly engaged in managing the dramatically increasing cases of COVID-19. At the same time, regular chronic and acute patients were still in need of support and demanding different health care services, which overwhelmed the community pharmacies with new responsibilities, as the only still available place to receive the required health service.

This research aims at measuring the quality of health care services provided by community pharmacies during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine period in Egypt based on patient perceptions. and finding answers to different emerging questions about the reliability of community pharmacies.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Quality Health Care

Mosadeghrad (2013) mentioned that quality healthcare is defined as "consistently delighting the patient by providing efficacious, effective and efficient healthcare services according to the latest clinical guidelines and standards, which meet the patient's needs and satisfies providers." Healthcare quality definitions common to all stakeholders involve offering effective care that contributes to the patient's well-being and satisfaction.

However, quality of health care services has different perspectives for the health professionals and pharmacy staff, The following will discuss each perspective.

Health Care Service Quality from Health Professional Perspective

Donabedian (1988) mentioned that the quality of health care given by a health professional can be judged by its outcome, the technical performance of the care and by interpersonal relationships. Lau (1986) stated, "Outcome" is a change in patients' health, such as reduction in pain, relapses, or death rates.

Shi and Singh (2015) mentioned that large differences in outcomes can be measured for individual medical providers and smaller differences can be measured by studying large groups, such as low- and high-volume doctors. Significant initiatives to improve healthcare quality outcomes have been undertaken that include clinical practice guidelines, cost efficiency, critical pathways, and risk management

Health Care Service Quality from The Pharmacy Staff Perspective

White and Klinner (2012) mentioned that health care service quality from the pharmacy staff perspective is significantly limited by insufficient internal communication and control processes that impede role clarity and the resolution of conflicting role expectations among customer service personnel. Participants in their study indicated that these problems could be alleviated through the implementation of more transparent, realistic, measurable, and accepted quality specifications by pharmacy management.

Eades and Ferguson (2011) stated that most pharmacists view public health services as important and part of their role but secondary to medicine related roles. Pharmacists' confidence in providing public health services was on the whole average to low. Time was consistently identified as a barrier to providing public health services. Lack of adequate counselling space, lack of demand, and expectation of a negative reaction from customers were also reported by some pharmacists as barriers. A need for further training was identified in relation to several public health services. Most pharmacy users had never been offered public health services by their pharmacist and did not expect to be offered.

Patient Perspective

Asadi-Lari et al. (2004) mentioned that patient satisfaction surveys are the main qualitative measure of the patient's perspective. Patients may not have the clinical judgement of physicians and often judge quality based on practitioner's concern and demeanor, among other things.

Al-Abri et al. (2016). stated that patient satisfaction surveys have become a somewhat controversial measure of quality care. Proponents argue that patient surveys can provide needed feedback to physicians to assist in improving their practice. In addition, patient satisfaction often correlates with patient involvement in decision making and can improve patient-centered care. Patients' evaluation of care can identify opportunities for improvement in care, reducing costs, monitoring performance of health plans, and provide a comparison across health care institutions.

Problem Definition

With the increased demand for receiving health care service from community pharmacies during the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic, there were new types of health care services and higher expectations from consumers and patients for the offered services and the type of support that the community pharmacies can offer. especially when the patients expect to receive the same service quality as they used to do from health care professionals. Where the community pharmacies able to meet the patients' and the consumers' expectations, and can we consider community pharmacies a reliable health care service provider, especially in crises times when hospitals and physicians are totally engaged in emergency cases of COVID-19?

Scope Of the Study

The scope of this research is to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of health care services provided by community pharmacies in Egypt.

This research will assess the gap between the expectations and perceptions of the consumers and patients (who received health care services from community pharmacies during COVID-19) about the health care services provided by community pharmacies.

Research Objective

The objective of this research is to test the hypothesis that community pharmacies are highly reliable healthcare service providers and can meet the patients' expectations through offering reiable healthcare service quality.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Based on the research objective, the theoretical framework SERVQUAL Or Gaps Model will be used to evaluate the five Gaps. The SERVQUAL scale has been tested and/or adapted in a great number of studies conducted in various service settings, cultural contexts...