Wales examines US chronic disease care model
An NHS trust in North Wales has been looking to the US for inspiration in improving chronic disease management.
Ffion Johnstone, chief pharmacist of North West Wales NHS Trust, was
part of a multidisciplinary team that recently went to Colorado to see
the Kaiser Permanente model of chronic disease management in action.
Mrs Johnstone told The Journal that the purpose of the visit was to see
what Wales could learn from the world leaders in chronic disease management.
She pointed out that the Kaiser Permanente system aims to keep patients
out of hospital and considers high rates of hospital admission to be
an indication that primary care approaches have failed.
“The benefits of a more integrated approach to primary and secondary
care were apparent in the Kaiser Permanente model,” Mrs Johnstone
said. She added that her trust would now investigate how supplementary
(and
in the future independent) pharmacist prescribers could work more at
the interface of primary and secondary care, for example, in outreach
clinics.
She said that the role of the pharmacist in medicines reviews in both
settings would also be examined, with the aim of more active management
of patients in primary care. This should help to reduce overall and inappropriate
hospital admissions.
“We will now be working with the Welsh Assembly Government to see
how we can best integrate partnerships across local health boards and
the
trust,” Mrs Johnstone said.
The trip was sponsored by the Welsh NHS Confederation, Pfizer and the
North West Wales NHS Trust.
US models of managed care are already being piloted
in a number of sites across England (PJ, 15 May 2004, p601). |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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