Factors affecting customer’s satisfaction in out patient pharmacy University Malaya Medical Centre

Introduction: The out patients of University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) may receive either manual or electronic prescriptions (ERx). Patients with different type of prescriptions (manual or ERx) will go through different flow of process in the Out patient Pharmacy. Patients with long term prescription (more than one month) regardless of manual or ERx prescriptions may choose to collect their next supply of medication from manual counter (Counter 6) or PharmCARE.

Objective: To determine customer’s satisfaction level and to identify factors influencing customers satisfaction level between the three different services (manual, ERx and PharmCARE). To obtain the waiting time of customers with long term prescription.

Method: This comparative study was carried out from 4th February to 14th March 2008 in the Out-Patient Pharmacy, UMMC. A total of 450 of customers were conveniently selected, where 150 customers were selected for every service. Data was collected using questionnaire forms. Waiting time for normal counters (Counter 6) and PharmCARE was collected from the QMS waiting time machine and manually respectively. The obtained data was analyzed using SPSS 12.0V for frequency distribution and cross tabulations.

Result: ERx and PharmCARE customers are satisfied with the services provided (61.3% and 100% respectively), whilst there are more Manual counters customers (51.3%) who are not satisfied with the services given. Most of Manual counter customers are satisfied with staff services (54.8%), while ERx counter and PharmCARE customers are satisfied with the waiting time (40.2% and 81.3% respectively). Dissatisfaction of Manual counter customers was due to long waiting time (77.9%) while ERx customers are not satisfied with the waiting area provided (36.2%). There are no PharmCARE customer’s who are not satisfied with the services given. PharmCARE was able to achieve the Out patient Pharmacy Quality Objective everyday which is to serve at least 75 % of patients within 30 minutes, whereas Manual counter (Counter 6) only able to achieved the Quality Objective 8 days out of 28 working days during the duration of the study.

Conclusion: Customers from different services have different ranking of requirements in term of improving their satisfaction level. Pharmacy Unit in UMMC needs to address these factors that affect customers satisfaction in order to further improve the unit’s image.