How do pharmacies select which PPGs (pharmacies’ purchasing groups) to adhere?
Over the last decade, the Portuguese community pharmacies have dealt with many diverse influences that have contributed to worsening the economic condition of CP’s business model, such as the stricter property-owning restrictive legislation, the local economic and financial crisis, the historical CPs’ high debt levels and the market liberalization policies.
Therefore, the adherence to pharmacies’ purchasing groups is crucial to guarantee that the regular medicine supply is not compromised. The PPGs are intermediaries between the pharmacies and pharmaceutical suppliers or wholesalers.
In this sense, how do pharmacies select which PPGS to adhere? The Welphi platform was the tool chosen by Rafael Ribeiro (University of Lisbon) to develop a master thesis with the aim to create a 3-Round Delphi process that involved a group of 25 participants - including health experts, owner of pharmacies and pharmaceuticals - in selecting the set of criteria that should be used to choose a PPG.
1st round: The process was set up on Welphi and a 1st round was launched asking participants the question “Do you agree that this criterion is relevant to evaluate PPG’s proposals?”.
Answers were provided according to a 5-point Likert Scale: "Strongly agree", "Agree", "Neither agree or disagree", "Disagree", "Strongly disagree", "Don’t know / Don’t answer" and “Neither agree nor disagree”. Additionally, panelists were able to provide comments as they seem appropriate.
2nd and 3rd rounds: Welphi used the participants’ answers and comments from the previous round to set up a 2nd round, where panelists were able to analyze and then maintain or revise their answers. A similar process was used for Round 3.
Throughout the process, Welphi’s back-office was used to keep track of panelists participation status and, when needed, send reminder e-mails.
Results: The results of the whole process were automatically created by Welphi platform and they can be used to help pharmacies in developing a multicriteria evaluation model to asses PPG proposals.
