Medicines Management
Issue no 4, p3
July/August 2002

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Prescribing likely to be scrutinised

Medicines management and prescribing issues could well form a key theme for the Commission for Health Improvement will use in its clinical governance reviews of PCTs, according to a pharmacist involved in developing the review process.

Michelle Cossey, head of medicines and technology management, North and East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire Health Authority, said that CHI believed that the issue was important and an integral part of PCT business.

"CHI is aware that PCTs are developing organisations, and will expect them to be more or less well developed depending on how long they have been up and running," she said.

CHI has just completed pilot clinical governance reviews in a handful of PCTs, and has recently held a consultation on the process and format of the clinical governance frame-work to be used in future reviews. The next stage will be the start of the review process, scheduled to begin this September.

Mrs Cossey said there are several key areas that CHI could choose to review as part of this process.

These include strategic capacity, patient and public involvement, risk management, clinical audit, clinical effectiveness, staffing and staff management, education and training and continuing professional development and use of information to support clinical governance and health care delivery.

"CHI felt that medicines management and prescribing was an important area, as you could track its progress through all these elements and that aspects of medicines management were likely to be part of all areas of work of the PCT," said Mrs Cossey.

However, she added that a challenge for PCTs in meeting the clinical governance review criteria would be how they attract other primary care professionals in to the clinical governance system, including community pharmacists, opticians and dentists.

Ms Cossey added that PCTs should begin to look at risk management, along with medicines management and prescribing issues, not as a separate issue, but woven in to the whole PCT development process. "What I would say to PCTs is don't panic about starting up new systems for CHI review. Clinical governance around the whole issue of medicines management and prescribing should be integral to what you are already doing as an organisation."