Most choose pharmacist for proximity

DURHAM, N.C., April 11 (UPI) -- About 50 percent of U.S. adults said proximity to work or home was the top reason for choosing a pharmacy, a U.S. survey indicated.

Twenty-three percent said they choose a pharmacy for pricing, the Parata Prescription Safety 2008 survey said. A pharmacy's use of automated dispensing equipment, which has been shown to reduce prescription errors, ranked last in importance, cited by 2 percent of respondents.

Forty-nine percent of consumers ranked pharmacists over doctors -- 15 percent -- as principally responsible for ensuring their prescriptions are accurate, the survey found. Ninety-one percent of consumers asked could name the doctors who wrote their last prescriptions, but only 36 percent could name the pharmacists who filled them.

Eighty percent of prescription-takers spend less than two minutes speaking to their pharmacists when they pick up their medications and 45 percent don't talk to a pharmacist at all.

A poll of 1,500 adults conducted by the National Patient Safety Foundation found that one in three Americans has been affected by serious medical mistakes and of those -- 28 percent are related to a medication error.