PPIs: community pharmacists' compliance.

In order to determine community pharmacists' compliance with FDA PPI regulations, five trained shoppers were sent with estrogen prescriptions to 45 pharmacies in a large Midwestern city. Only 42 percent of the prescriptions dispensed were accompanied by a PPI. Fifty-six percent of the prescriptions were dispensed without safety caps. In all cases where a correct PPI was received, a follow-up phone call was made to a pharmacist at the pharmacy to determine the accuracy of the response to a question about information in the PPI. Only 39 percent of the pharmacists were able to correctly answer the phone-in question.