The Effect of Expanded Pharmacist Prescriptive Authority on COVID-19 Vaccine Rates
Background: Recent legislatures have granted expanded prescriptive authority to pharmacists with a collaborative practice agreement with a physician. This authority could include prescribing tobacco cessation products, birth controls, and antivirals for COVID-19. Although closely associated with pro...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing
2025-02-01
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| Series: | INNOVATIONS in Pharmacy |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/innovations/article/view/6126 |
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| Summary: | Background: Recent legislatures have granted expanded prescriptive authority to pharmacists with a collaborative practice agreement with a physician. This authority could include prescribing tobacco cessation products, birth controls, and antivirals for COVID-19. Although closely associated with providing preventative measures for COVID-19 in the forms of testing and vaccinations, the relationship between pharmacist prescriptive power and rate of COVID-19 vaccination remains unexplored. The objective of the study is to determine the association between pharmacist prescriptive authority and the rate of COVID-19 vaccinations between neighboring counties along state lines of states with differing laws on this prescriptive power.
Methods: States with expanded pharmacist prescriptive authority include: New Mexico, Oregon, Idaho, Florida, California, North Carolina, Montana, New York, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Counties are selected if the center of the county is within 30 miles from a state border that divides a state with expanded pharmacist prescriptive authority from a state without. Monthly vaccination data from January 2021 to December 2021 was acquired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and linear regression was performed and state-border-pair fixed effects was used as a control.
Results: The estimated effect of expanded prescriptive authority is an increase of five percentage points in the share of the adult population that completed the initial COVID-19 vaccine series.
Conclusion: The relationship between pharmacist prescriptive authority and increased COVID-19 vaccination rates is statistically significant. The results showed that allowing pharmacist to have prescriptive powers could potentially aid in reducing vaccine hesitancy for future pandemics.
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| ISSN: | 2155-0417 |