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Conventus is to hold another symposium on Comparing Hospital Medicines Use in Birmingham, UK, in November.
The focus of the one-day symposium, which will be held at Austin House on November 16, will be the disparity between the use of metrics in primary and secondary care.
With hospital medicines use accounting for over 30% of all medicines expenditure and rising at over 12% per annum, the organisers believe there is a growing need to benchmark secondary care medicines use.
This pressure will only increase with the advent of Clinical Commissioning Groups, since they will want to exercise downward pressure on any adverse influences on their budget.
Since last year’s conference, there has been considerable activity around this area of work, most notably from NHS Life Sciences and the NHS Information centre, which will be described in this symposium.
In addition experts in the West Midlands continue to develop tools to support this work.
Previous conferences have identified the problems of sourcing accurate data and this conference will include a presentation on new IT solution being pilot tested in the West Midlands to address this.
Much is made of QIPP as a key priority in today’s NHS and, whilst the focus has been on primary/secondary care, Mental Health Services and the role of the Pharmaceutical Industry has often been overlooked. These issues will also be discussed.
This symposium will be of interest to the NHS and pharmaceutical industry, as pressure on NHS budgets mount and Clinical Commissioning Groups assume their responsibilities.
Issues to be covered include:
• Developing metrics for hospital medicines use
• Exploring why benchmarking matters
• Understanding the barriers and opportunities with this work
• Examining the necessary IT systems needed to support this work
• Understanding fully how to support commissioners and providers in delivery of the medicines agenda and QIPP
• Addressing money, safety and quality agendas
• Tracking medicines use in a Mental Health Trust
• Considering how the pharmaceutical industry can help
• Exploring ideas, opportunities and risks
