Describing the consumer profile of different types of community pharmacy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Introduction Aotearoa New Zealand has a range of community pharmacies; independent, corporate, hybrid, and mail-order, each with differing service delivery models. Corporate and hybrid pharmacies do not charge the NZ$5.00 co-payment on standard prescriptions; however, prescription co-payments were universally removed from 1July 2023. Aim This research aims to describe the consumer profiles of Aotearoa New Zealand's different types of community pharmacies prior to the removal of the prescription co-payment. Methods A nationwide retrospective observational study linked 1-year of dispensing data (1 March 2022-28 February 2023) from the Pharmaceutical Collection to patient enrolment data using a National Health Index (NHI) number to identify the demographic details of people who use the different pharmacy types. People were assigned to a particular type of pharmacy if they collected at least 70% of their prescriptions from there; if they did not meet this threshold, they were defined as mixed users. Results Independent pharmacies had an older customer base and fewer Asian users compared to other pharmacy types. Hybrid pharmacies served a greater proportion of Pacific peoples and those from areas of high deprivation. Māori made up relatively equal proportions of users across all pharmacy types. Areas without major cities had fewer corporate pharmacies and only four hybrid pharmacies were identified outside of Auckland. Discussion There appears to be differences in the consumer profiles of the different pharmacy types. These results will serve as a comparison to how removing prescription co-payments shifts patients' behaviour.