Constructs of the Collaboration between Hospital and Community Pharmacists: Findings from Community Pharmacist Perspective Using Multivariate Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling

Collaborations between hospital and community pharmacists play a key role in ensuring consistent continuation of pharmacotherapy within official medical care plans designed to promote community-based healthcare. A previous study conducted by the authors clarified the constructs of collaboration between the hospital and community pharmacists from the hospital pharmacist's perspective. In this study, a similar questionnaire was used to survey a group of pharmacies with 424 outlets nationwide, and 244 responses were collected. Factor analysis from the community pharmacists' perspective extracted five latent factors comprising 18 variables, and structural equation modeling yielded a model with a high goodness-of-fit. In the latter model, variables representing ``Organizational climate'' and ``Basic policy on collaboration'' formed the foundation of the collaboration between hospital and community pharmacists, while variables representing ``Understanding of healthcare policy'', ``Resources for collaboration'', and ``Community support systems'' represented concepts that flexibly compensated for fluctuations in medical policy. These trends were similar to those of the constructs previously indicated by hospital pharmacists. We performed multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling to confirm the impact of the inclusion of ``Need for collaboration'' as a dependent variable on the proposed constructs of hospital-community pharmacist collaboration using diŠerent analytical methods. Our results indicated that ``Organizational climate'', ``Basic policy on collaboration'', and ``Community support systems'' aŠected the ``Need for collaboration''. Our findings indicate that future studies are needed to confirm and clarify the causal relationships demonstrated by the constructs of hospital-community pharmacist collaboration seen within the current study.