CareData releases survey

A survey of 20,066 pharmacy customers revealed their opinions on 225 issues, including the reasons they selected a store, the types of prescriptions they had filled and their familiarity and satisfaction with non-prescription products.

The CareData Retail Pharmacy Customer Survey, released by Caredata.com, a health care consumer research company based in White Plains, NY, evaluated customer satisfaction with retail pharmacies across the United States.

"Pharmacy has entered an era in which consumers face many new choices about where to fill prescriptions as well as how to fill prescriptions," said Jim Wilson, vice president of CareData Reports, the subsidiary of Caredata.com that conducted the survey. "The new CareData Survey explains the issues driving consumers' decisions and shows how specific pharmacy types and chains are performing."

Some key findings of the report were:

•Â The leading reasons why consumers chose one pharmacy over another were location and acceptance of their insurance. However, the leading reasons for being satisfied with a pharmacy and wanting to come back were courteousness of the staff and ease of getting prescriptions refilled.

•Â The number of consumers who indicated that their pharmacist suggested changing their drug to something other than that which was written by their doctor was 24%. This varied from a high of 28% in the Northwest to a low of 20% in the Northeast.

•Â Reasons for making prescription substitutions varied regionally. "Prescription not covered by drug plan" was cited more often in the Western states, where substitutions with other brands were also at the highest level at 21%.

•Â Certain types of prescriptions were filled more often at specific pharmacies. For example, independent pharmacy users were more likely to fill prescriptions for reflux/ulcer medications, while those using supermarket pharmacies filled more allergy prescriptions

Further information about the report's findings can be found online atwww.caredatareports.com. PR