How:
The NPC delivers a wide range of activities
and support through a coordinated
work programme, comprising six main
elements:
The NPC team delivers a coordinated
programme of events aimed at supporting
SHA, PCT and practice-based prescribing
advisers; support personnel; senior
professionals and managers; prescribers
and other relevant professionals across
the NHS. A significant number of targeted
therapeutic workshops, day seminars
and national conferences are run throughout
the year.
Pharmacy in the Future provided a
vision of how the challenging reforms
described in the NHS Plan would be
applied to pharmacy and the use of
medicines. The MMS project team at
the NPC has the remit of improving
the capability for medicines management
services in primary care through a
systematic and coordinated programme
of quality improvement. It manages
the extensive National Medicines Management
Services Collaborative Programme,
the overall goal of which is: “…
to help optimise prescribing, plus
the experiences and outcomes for each
patient, wherever medicines are involved”.
This programme runs in both primary
care and hospital environments.
The MeReC team currently produces
three publications: MeReC Bulletin,
MeReC Extra and MeReC Briefing. The
topics covered by these publications
are usually clinical and are aimed
at providing concise, evidence-based
information about medicines and prescribing-related
issues.
These
publications are read by~75,000 people,
most of whom are health care professionals
working in primary care organisations
and hospital trusts providing prescribing
support and medicines management services.
However, managers and those working
in other sectors of the NHS will also
find them a useful resource. MeReC
Publications are published by the
NPC, and are funded by the National
Institute for Clinical Excellence.
Since 1997 the NPC has been involved
in a collaborative scheme to inform
key purchasers, in both primary and
secondary care, of new medicines that
may have significant therapeutic,
financial and service impact on the
health service. A number of information
resources are produced each year to
facilitate effective early consideration
of any potentially necessary local
management action. These include:
On the Horizon – Future Medicines
and Rapid Review Bulletins, plus the
New Drugs in Clinical Development
Monographs. Partners in elements of
these schemes are the Wessex and Newcastle
Medicines Information Centres and
the UKMI consortium.
The NPC continues to provide significant
input into national policy development
and implementation, and also helps
support the local introduction, of
prescribing by professionals other
than doctors. We produce a range of
resources (paper and web-based), e.g.
profession-specific competency frameworks,
and provide therapeutic training to
assist those with a prescribing role
in maintaining their competence.
The
NPC Plus Programme was created in
response to an increasing demand for
additional NPC support from PCTs and
other NHS organisations. This element
of the work programme allows the NPC
to develop and deliver more locally
focused support to healthcare organisations,
over and above its existing activities.
NPC
Plus offers a range of targeted support
packages for both uni- and multi-disciplinary
audiences that can be commissioned
by healthcare organisations, either
individually or by groups that serve
the same locality.
In
addition, the NPC also:
1)
Supports the Dissemination
of Good Practice - helping
to ensure that SHAs, PCTs, and through
them, their GPs and other prescribers
have a clear understanding of:
-
how the wider prescribing agenda
is developing
-
what information and support on
evidence-based healthcare, clinical
effectiveness and medicine use is
potentially of value to the NHS
both locally and nationally.
Recent
NPC guides to good practice available
on our website include:
‘Saving Time, Helping Patients:
a good practice guide to quality repeat
prescribing’ and
‘A guide to good practice
in the management of controlled drugs
in primary care (England)’.
2)
Helps inform the development of new
Information Technology
related to prescribing, and assess
its potential to aid the work of SHAs,
PCTs, Trusts and prescribers. The
NPC's work builds on developments
such as the 'Toolkit' initiative produced
by the Prescription Pricing Authority
in collaboration with the Prescribing
Support Unit.
3)
Helps inform Research and
other national initiatives
by continuing to keep SHAs, PCTs and
other relevant NHS staff informed
of key information emerging from both
the NHS Research and Development and
Health Technology Assessment initiatives,
and by contributing to the identification
of important technologies for further
NHS funded research.
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