Trust's ratings improve with support from pharmacy initiatives
The NHS is getting better, but there is still room for further improvement.
That was the message from the Healthcare Commission when it released
its second annual health check of NHS trusts last week (overview PDF 1.5MB
and directory of performance ratings PDF 500K).
The report rates all 394 NHS trusts in England on their quality of care
and use of resources as excellent, good, fair or weak.
Anthony Sinclair, chief pharmacist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital,
which was one of two trusts to improve its ratings from fair to excellent
across both categories of assessment, said that developments in the pharmacy
service and having the trust actively behind the medicines management
agenda has had an impact on ratings at his trust.
Overall, there has been a general improvement compared with last year’s
report. In 2005–06, 40 per cent of trusts scored either excellent
or good for quality of care, with 15 per cent achieving this for use
of resources. In 2006–07, these figures rose to 46 per cent and
37 per cent, respectively. Although the trusts scoring fair or weak were
still in a majority, the trend towards improvement is encouraging, say
the report’s authors.
Royal Marsden only trust to achieve double excellent rating two
years running |
A score of excellent for both aspects of the
report was achieved by 19 trusts, 17 more than last year. The Royal Marsden
NHS Trust is the only
trust to achieve this accolade two years in a row.
At Birmingham Children’s Hospital, the medical director has recognised
that pharmacy interventions play a prominent role in reducing clinical
risks, Mr Sinclair said. “There has been a change in culture towards
improving medicines management across all members of staff.”
This
includes reforming the Drug and Therapeutics Committee, which, now with
Mr Sinclair as vice-chairman, focuses heavily on the trusts medicines
management agenda.
The pharmacy has revamped its service delivery to allow pharmacists and
technicians more time on wards. “We now have several laptop computers
with printers on mobile trolleys that the ward-based pharmacy teams use.
Patients’ own medicines can be relabelled at the bedside and [discharge
medicines] can be dispensed from ward stocks.”
Other developments include: • Delivering pharmacy presentations to medical staff on areas of clinical
risk
• Increasing pharmacy presence in areas that previously had no pharmacy
link
• Initiating an interface team to improve communication with primary
care
• Introducing a “learning at lunch” programme for pharmacists
• Commencing research projects in collaboration with the local university
In contrast, all trusts with weak performance ratings will receive a
further visit from the Healthcare Commission to ensure that systems are
in place to improve performance. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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