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Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting

In the past two decades, most states in the United States have added authorization for pharmacists to administer some vaccinations. Expansions of this authority have also come with prescription requirements or other regulatory burdens. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of these...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Stoecker, Charles
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063185
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9050444
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author Stoecker, Charles
author_facet Stoecker, Charles
author_sort Stoecker, Charles
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description In the past two decades, most states in the United States have added authorization for pharmacists to administer some vaccinations. Expansions of this authority have also come with prescription requirements or other regulatory burdens. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of these expansions on influenza immunization rates in adults age 65 and over. A panel data, differences-in-differences regression framework to control for state-level unobserved confounders and shocks at the national level was used on a combination of a dataset of state-level statute and regulatory changes and influenza immunization data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Giving pharmacists permission to vaccinate had a positive impact on adult influenza immunization rates of 1.4 percentage points for adults age 65 and over. This effect was diminished by the presence of laws requiring pharmacists to obtain patient-specific prescriptions. There was no evidence that allowing pharmacists to administer vaccinations led patients to have fewer annual check-ups with physicians or not have a usual source of health care. Expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice laws to include administering the influenza vaccine had a positive impact on influenza shot uptake. This may have implications for relaxing restrictions on other forms of care that could be provided by pharmacists.
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spelling pubmed-81474342021-05-26 Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting Stoecker, Charles Vaccines (Basel) Article In the past two decades, most states in the United States have added authorization for pharmacists to administer some vaccinations. Expansions of this authority have also come with prescription requirements or other regulatory burdens. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of these expansions on influenza immunization rates in adults age 65 and over. A panel data, differences-in-differences regression framework to control for state-level unobserved confounders and shocks at the national level was used on a combination of a dataset of state-level statute and regulatory changes and influenza immunization data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Giving pharmacists permission to vaccinate had a positive impact on adult influenza immunization rates of 1.4 percentage points for adults age 65 and over. This effect was diminished by the presence of laws requiring pharmacists to obtain patient-specific prescriptions. There was no evidence that allowing pharmacists to administer vaccinations led patients to have fewer annual check-ups with physicians or not have a usual source of health care. Expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice laws to include administering the influenza vaccine had a positive impact on influenza shot uptake. This may have implications for relaxing restrictions on other forms of care that could be provided by pharmacists. MDPI 2021-05-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8147434/ /pubmed/34063185 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9050444 Text en © 2021 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Stoecker, Charles
Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title_full Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title_fullStr Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title_full_unstemmed Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title_short Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting
title_sort shooting from the ‘scrip: scope of practice laws and access to immunizations in the pharmacy setting
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063185
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9050444
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