The future for prescribing advice in the NHS
Each year the Pharmacy Management National Seminar focuses on major changes in the NHS and the seminar in 2006 was no exception.
Primary care within England was facing two major changes that would impact on the structure of PCT medicines management support and also underpin closer communications between primary and secondary care in relation to prescribing policy. These two factors were the merging of primary care trusts to reduce by half the number of PCTs within England and the advent of practice-based commissioning of GPs throughout the whole country.
There were remarkable similarities starting to happen between secondary and primary care when clinicians were given budget responsibilities which included the prescribing allocation. The financial situation within the NHS was undoubtedly going to place great pressure on decision making between then and the end of the 2006 NHS financial year.
Pharmacists had significant challenges to prove their worth to both GP commissioners and clinical directors within secondary care trusts. The challenge faced by pharmacy was not only to assist in managing resources more effectively, but also to meet the needs of clinicians in primary care who wished to ensure that their patients spent as little time as possible in the costly secondary care sector.
The seminar held in October 2006 was co-ordinated to collect as much practical experience as possible from around the country and to identify speakers who locality had undertaken early initiatives in the significantly changing medicines management arena.
All presentations from the day are available for download here.
You will need to register with Pharmacy Management in order to access the documents.
Please note - presenters job titles are listed as they were at the time of the presentations.