Quality Use of Medicines

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Quality Use of Medicines currently comprises services offered under the National Prescribing Service (NPS) and Closing The Gap program. The aim of both programs is to ensure that prescribers, pharmacists and other relevant members of the health care team, apply judicious, efficacious, cost effective and appropriate, principles of medication management.
General practice is supported with evidenced-based information through the QUM facilitators.
Their roles include:

  • Providing one to one educational visits to General Practitioners (GP's) and practice nurses to give them the opportunity to discuss issues in therapeutics.
  • Conducting small group case based discussions with GP's, pharmacists, aged care and practice nurses. These often take the form of educational events.
  • Promoting and supporting QUM activities in the community. These often take the form of resource development for and engagement with the community pharmacy sector.

With the advent of Medicare Locals the future holds great opportunity for expansion of QUM related services that aim to embrace input from foundation members- The Pharmacy Guild of Qld, Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, Council on the Ageing and Aged Care Qld. It is the hope that existing partnerships will also be developed with The University of Qld (School of Pharmacy) to support the patient’s medication journey.

The National Prescribing Service (NPS) is an independent, non-profit organisation that provides evidence based information and services to health professionals and the community on Quality Use of Medicines (QUM).This program aims to provide general practitioners with independent, unbiased, evidence based information on therapeutic topics including prescribing information, updates to the therapeutic guidelines and resources for the practice.

The educational visiting program comprises one to one visits between the general practitioner and NPS facilitator, and small group interactive case study meetings.

Educational Visiting (One to One)

These one to one visits generally take between twenty to thirty minutes with the Alliance's facilitator visiting the doctor in their own practice. Two to three different therapeutic topics are offered during any year and usually coinside with the NPS Case Studies published in the NPS News and the current available NPS clinical audits.

These visits are recognised under the QPI as part of the Practice Incentive Programme (PIP). One visit counts for one activity (remember that 3 activities are required for each FTE GP, to be eligible for practice incentive payments with one of the activities being a compulsory clinical audit). If you are not registered for PIP, you may still find a visit useful to receive the latest objective information on therapeutics and prescribing. A visit provides you with the opportunity to discuss current recommendations and guidelines surrounding prescribing of medications for these conditions.


Small Group Case Study Meetings

Complimenting the one-to-one practice visits are the Alliances small group case study meetings where we provide facilitation for the practice to come together to work through specific cases to discuss issues surrounding a prescribing scenario. These group meetings also attract PIP and QA&CPD points.

Fact Sheets

Available Fact Sheets

NPS NEWS is distributed bimonthly with Australian Prescriber and provides general information on therapeutics. Look for case studies inserted in NPS News. Case studies can be completed individually or used in group activities.

Clinical audits are approved by the RACGP for eligibility for Quality Assurance and Continuing Professional Development Points.

RADAR – Rational Assessment of Drugs and Research

Radar is an online service developed by the National Prescribing Service (NPS), designed for general practitioners, pharmacists and other health professionals. Radar will provide helpful, timely and independent information on new medicines, revised PBS listings and newly published research relevant to primary health care.

RADAR provides four ways to access free, accurate, and balanced, evidence based updates on new drugs, research and PBS listings. Over 20,000 have signed up for the service.

With four ways to access RADAR keeping track is made even easier:

  1. Email alert
  2. Website
  3. Major prescribing software
  4. Hard copy

Register online at www.npsradar.org.au or email document.write('\u0069\u006e\u0066\u006f\u0040\u006e\u0070\u0073\u002e\u006f\u0072\u0067\u002e\u0061\u0075')info@nps.org.auinfo@nps.org.au info@nps.org.au info@nps.org.au info@nps.org.au for a hard copy. The full version of NPS RADAR will only be available online.

For more information please contact Michael Copestake or Jennifer Roberts at the Alliance on (07) 3390 2466.

 


Educational Visiting Topics

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Media Releases

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