The Society: Development team for pharmaceutical care models to be set up in Scotland

The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7161 p217-221
18 August 2001

Development team for pharmaceutical care models to be set up in Scotland

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland and the Scottish Executive are to set up a pharmaceutical care model scheme (PCMS) development team to design and implement PCMSs for the whole of Scotland. The development team will be based at the Society’s Scottish office in Edinburgh. An advertisement for the director of the team appears in The Journal this week.

The team will include three part-time facilitators and will be funded from primary care development monies. The team will identify best practice from the existing PCMSs and share this with primary care trusts. It will assist PCTs to design, implement and measure the outcomes of the schemes and liaise with specialists in pharmaceutical public health to develop a needs assessment tool kit.

The team will be expected to establish a practicable framework for rolling out model schemes nationally. This will include specifying standards of service, training and accreditation, documentation, support materials, fees and ongoing running costs, and outcome measures and benefits.

The PCMSs were established by the Scottish Executive’s Health Department in 1999 with schemes for the frail elderly, palliative care and enduring mental illness. A proportion of Scottish community pharmacy remuneration funding is ring-fenced to pay pharmacists involved in model schemes. Two of the model schemes won awards in the Pharmaceutical Care Awards 2000, run by The Pharmaceutical Journal (PJ, 30 June). The Scottish health plan says that the schemes will be extended to cover cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The development team might advise on these areas.