Medicines management
The ICB has a highly skilled and experienced medicines management team with strong and established relationships with Primary Care, pharmacy partners and wider clinical teams and specialists across our system providers. The formation of the ICS allows for an exciting and visionary future for Pharmacy with the key focus of improving health outcomes for people across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.
Mission: To drive improvements in health outcomes and reductions in health inequalities for the population of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin by leading on a system-wide collaborative approach, ensuring safe and effective medicines use is integral to all services, pathways and settings.
Vision: Transform the delivery of pharmacy creating an integrated workforce across the system, striving for innovation and collaborative change, that delivers seamless, patient-centred care at every point of the patient’s journey.
Medicines Value Priorities for 2022-23
Optimal use of specialist and high cost medicines (biosimilars and NICE approved medicines)
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) treatment and prevention- Atrial fibrillation, lipid management, hypertension and heart failure
Optimising care of patients with asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) through shared treatment guidelines, improving individual care planning, personalised care and patient empowerment
Improving the quality of prescribing and uptake of new technology giving patients the tools for better control of their diabetes
Opioid overuse in chronic pain management, stopping the over medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both (STOMP)/ supporting treatment and appropriate medication in paediatric (STAMP) patients with a learning disability, autism or both, frailty and end of life.
Reduce overprescribing and promote robust repeat prescribing systems
Empowering patients to self-care for minor illnesses and to access the right healthcare professional at the right time including promoting the role of community pharmacy. Reducing the use of the national list of medicines of limited clinical value and weak evidence of benefit.
Ensuring the environmental impact of medicines use is considered in all decision making. Current focus is on the reduction of use of inhalers and anaesthetics with a high carbon footprint
What’s been done so far?
- Pharmacy Leadership Group: There is an established Pharmacy Leadership Group (PLG) for our Integrated Care System who have responsibility and oversight for the development and delivery of the strategy for medicines and pharmacy across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. This includes Chief Pharmacists from the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, the Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust and community pharmacy and primary care network (PCN) pharmacy representatives.
- Area Prescribing Committee: We have established an area prescribing committee (APC) with system-wide membership which has responsibility for introducing new medicines into our system formulary; medicine optimisation and making best use of our resources. We have an ICS formulary that is agreed at the (APC) with input from GPs and specialist clinicians.
- Medicines Safety Group: The ICS medicines safety group was established in November 2021. This group will ensure we have a collaborative system approach to medicines safety, linking into the national priorities, regional medicines safety groups and to provide a forum for a local response to medicines incidents, safety and an opportunity for shared learning within our system. The group has key priorities of focus for 22/23 including opioid prescribing, sodium valproate in women of childbearing potential and anticoagulant prescribing.
- Antimicrobial Stewardship Group: There is a system antimicrobial formulary, which is used across primary and secondary care. We are in the process of reviewing our system approach to antimicrobial stewardship and are strengthening our collaborative system approach. We have a newly formed system antimicrobial stewardship group which includes wider representation from the system including infection prevention control, public health, dentistry, veterinary providers. The ICS group will develop a system wide strategic vision for antimicrobial stewardship.