Mental health services included in NPC’s medicines management collaborative
The third wave of NHS trusts to join the National Prescribing Centre’s hospital medicines management collaborative was announced this week. Of the 25 trusts joining the collaborative, nine are from mental health trusts — the first time mental health services have been included in the collaborative.
Richard Seal, director of medicines management at the NPC, explained
that the inclusion of mental health trusts will bring new medicines management
challenges since they often provide their pharmacy services in different
ways to acute hospital trusts. “Although their perspective is sometimes
different, they share many of the same medicines management improvement
issues,” he said.
The NPC has also announced a new community pharmacy collaborative-style
programme in England co-ordinated by its medicines management team that
is expected to start this summer.
The “Community pharmacy framework collaborative” programme,
which aims to help primary care trusts realise the benefits of the new
pharmacy contract, will consist of a series of workshops to encourage
the development of local networks and the spread of best practice. All
PCTs have been invited to join the programme with the aim of recruiting
one from each health authority area. The sites that will be joining the
programme are expected to be announced next month. |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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