Australian travellers' thoughts on using and paying for a travel medicine and vaccination service in community pharmacies

Background: Australian community pharmacies are facing a challenging time due to hyper-competitive industry conditions and recent reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) impacting revenue and profitability. Therefore, finding new revenue streams is more important than ever for their survival. In Australia, pharmacists are already recognised as the most accessible health care professional and as skilled vaccinators. Community pharmacy is also, for many international travellers, the provider of their travel medicines and preventative travel health needs. The introduction of a user-pays community pharmacy travel medicines and health service that includes prescribing, provision, and administration of travel medicines has the potential to provide a revenue stream to increase profit and sustain the community pharmacy industry.Purpose: This study explored international travellers’ willingness to pay for, and influences on their usage of, a prospective patient-funded, pharmacist-led travel medicine and vaccination service in a community pharmacy setting.Method: Travel agents throughout South-East Queensland were recruited to distribute an anonymous, online survey, to their clients. The survey was distributed by the recruited travel agency in the manner they thought was most appropriate for their business. Methods included placing signage in the store, email blasts, newsletters, and business social media pages. The survey utilised the Qualtrics platform. Participants were provided a detailed description of the service including the pharmacist’s qualifications and then asked to consider if they would pay to use this service in community pharmacy (YES/NO). Participants were provided a text box to enter what would influence them to use/not use this service. Inductive thematic analysis of data was undertaken using Excel for the manual coding process. Codes, categories and themes were produced using an open and axial coding method as described by Saldana.Results: Of the participants who completed the survey 89% were willing to use the described travel medicine and vaccination service in community pharmacy if it was provided by a pharmacist with extra training. The predominant themes identified were ‘most accessible health professional’, ‘advanced scope of practice’, ‘value’, ‘process’, ‘patient beliefs about pharmacist scope of practice’, and ‘novel scope of practice’. These themes included some well understood advantages of community pharmacy such as ‘most accessible health professional’ and ‘value’. However, this study also highlighted themes that as the role of the community pharmacist in Australia evolves, need consideration, in particular the theme ‘patient beliefs about pharmacist scope of practice’.Conclusion: This study demonstrates a willingness by Australians travelling overseas to use and pay for a travel medication and vaccination service within community pharmacies in Australia. Therefore, this is a potential new revenue stream for community pharmacies. Having this service provided in community pharmacy may also improve access to travel medicines for international travellers by providing a one stop shop for all their travel medicine needs. Future research would need to explore the development of essential training as well as the utility of implementation