Applications invited for hospital medicines management collaborative
Ten hospitals will be able to join the hospital medicines management collaborative hosted by the National Prescribing Centre. The initial pilot wave of 10
sites will be announced early in February 2004. Health Minister Rosie Winterton,
speaking at the British Pharmaceutical Conference in Harrogate in September
2003, announced that the pilot would build on the successful collaborative
programme already running primary care.
There is a particular desire to to involve trusts that have identified
improvement needs through the 2001 medicines management framework for hospitals.
Trusts involved in the programme will be offered support and facilitation
from the national medicines management team and support to implement NHS
medicine management developments.
The collaborative approach is a systematic improvement method which has
been applied to a range of management challenges, and has been used in
health care systems in the US and Sweden. Teams of 11 or 12 people from
the successful trusts will attend four one-and-a-half day learning workshops.
Teams are expected to include multidisciplinary representatives from pharmacy,
nursing, medicine, senior management and finance. Participants will learn
about quality improvement, skills for measuring improvement and practical
ideas for delivering changes in medicines management.
Trusts planning to apply to join the medicines managment collaborative
are asked to send notification of their interest by email to hmmc@npc.nhs.uk by Friday 19 December. Completed application forms, together with an accompanying
declaration of commitment should be returned to the Director of Medicines
Management at the National Prescribing Centre by midday on Monday 5 January
2004.
Further information and an application form is available here. |
