The Role of Pharmacists in Minimizing the Risk Inherent in Unbundled Telehealth Services: A 12-Month Retrospective Case Study

Pharmacists have often been viewed as the last line of defence against prescription errors in traditional care models. Although a large number of chronic care patients are using telehealth services to increase their access to continuous care, researchers have yet to investigate prescription safety in such settings in Australia. The absence of this literature is particularly concerning in the context of the Australian Government’s admission in a 2024 report that the national health system has not adequately addressed the World Health Organization’s ‘Medication without harm’ objective. One of the report’s key findings was that knowledge on digital direct-to-consumer services is insufficient. A defining feature of some of these services is their unbundling of the pharmacy component, which logically increases the risk for prescription errors. This study analyzed the frequency of which the Cloud pharmacy network intercepted prescription errors in an unbundled digital sexual dysfunction service for men. Investigators found that Cloud pharmacists were responsible for intercepting 22 (5.31%) the 414 prescribing errors observed in the Pilot Australia service in 2023, including 12 (8.05%) of the 149 prescription errors for premature ejaculation (PE) patients and 10 (3.77%) of the 265 errors for erectile dysfunction (ED) patients. Seven of the errors intercepted by Cloud pharmacists were of high or medium severity, including four drug contraindications, two cases of inadequate patient history reviews, and one case of inadequate counselling. This study also appears to be the first to provide digital prescribing error rate data in an Australian sexual healthcare setting, observing an error rate of 0.86% from 30,649 ED prescriptions, 1.13% from the 13,154 PE prescriptions, and a total prescription error rate of 0.95% (414 out of 43,792 prescriptions). These findings demonstrate the vital role of pharmacists in intercepting prescribing errors in unbundled telehealth services. Possible implications of these findings include the allocation of additional resources across the pharmacy sector and the establishment of regulatory safety standards for unbundled telehealth services.