Large Scale Implementation of a Medicines Reconciliation Care Bundle in NHS GGC GP Practices
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Downloaded from http://qir.bmj.com/ on November 10, 2016 - Published by group.bmj.com Open Access BMJ Quality Improvement Programme Large scale implementation of a medicines reconciliation care bundle in NHS GGC GP practices Rachel Bruce To cite: Bruce R. Large scale ABSTRACT The Scottish Patient Safety Programme implementation of a Medicines reconciliation (MR) is an essential process (SPSP) is a unique national initiative that medicines reconciliation care for patient safety, promoting safer use of medicines aims to improve the safety and reliability of bundle in NHS GGC GP with effective communication at the interface, practices. BMJ Quality healthcare and reduce harm, whenever care Improvement Reports particularly when patients are admitted and discharged is delivered. One of the aims within SPSP is from hospital. Much of the work on MR has been 2016;5:u212988.w6116. to reduce the number of adverse events focussed in secondary care, however, the principles are doi:10.1136/bmjquality. causing avoidable harm to patients through u212988.w6116 equally important in primary care. The aim of the work was to test the Scottish Patient Safety in Primary Care safer use of medicines. Medicines reconcili- (SPSP-PC) MR care bundle and consider scale up and ation (MR) has been a focus of the Acute spread across all NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Adult Scottish Patient Safety Programme for Received 9 August 2016 fi Revised 22 September 2016 (NHS GGC) GP practices. Care bundles are a quality several years. It was identi ed nationally that Published Online First improvement tool which can drive improvement by MR is also a key feature in primary care and 31 October 2016 standardising processes to deliver optimum care. Pilot a focus on the MR process in both acute and work and testing began with 5 GP practices in 2011 primary care has safety benefits for both and and was spread to over 200 practices by 2015/16. A most importantly, patients. Safer medicines care bundle compliance process measure was management across the interface is a core measured monthly, with practices sampling 10 patients programme work stream to encourage devel- per month. Practices could view their run charts in real time and identify which measures resulted in “non- opment and implementation of reliable safe compliance” and PDSA cycles were promoted to test systems for reconciling medicines in GP prac- and implement improvements. Data was collated at tices following discharge from hospital. A NHS GGC level with an aim of 95% compliance with robust standardised approach to MR in GP the care bundle by March 2016. MR care bundle practice on discharge should improve the GP compliance started at 40% (5 practices reporting) in prescribing record and therefore the 2011 with final data in March 2016 demonstrating Emergency Care Summary (ECS) that is 92% compliance (192 practices reporting). A sustained extracted from GP systems and used as the “ ” reliability of 92-93% across >200 practices has been basis for MR on admission to hospital. Local observed since January 2015. In conclusion, the data identified that this was only correct bundle was implemented by 97% of NHS GGC GP around 50% of the time. There was a practices and resulted in process improvements. national care bundle in development for MR which had been piloted in another Health Board but not been adopted or tested in PROBLEM NHS GGC GP practices. Practices acknowl- Scotland has a population of approximately edged that MR is an important area of 5.3 million and healthcare is provided by the patient safety but none could demonstrate National Health Service and delivered across they had a standard process in place. To 14 territorial health boards. NHS Greater determine if there was a problem five prac- Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC) is the largest tices agreed to participate in a pilot project health board providing care to a population to test and measure the MR care bundle.1 of ~1.2 million and has ~135,000 emergency Run chart data and practice visits identified admissions per year. There are currently 242 that their processes were not as robust as GP practices across NHS GGC with a primary they had anticipated and they were not stan- NHS GGC, Scotland care prescribing budget of ~£242 million. dardised across the whole practice team. The Correspondence to 101 million prescription items are dispensed main aim of the project was to develop, test Rachel Bruce annually and 59% of over 70 year olds and implement at scale an MR care bundle [email protected] receive 5 or more medicines. focussing on process reliability which was Bruce R. BMJ Quality Improvement Reports 2016;5:u212988.w6116. doi:10.1136/bmjquality.u212988.w6116 1 Downloaded from http://qir.bmj.com/ on November 10, 2016 - Published by group.bmj.com Open Access defined as 95% compliance with the MR care bundle in improvement work was to test a recognised SPSP care general practice across participating NHS GGC GP prac- bundle at small scale for consideration of implementa- tices by March 2016. Secondary aims to indicate tion and spread across a large organisation. Following improved outcomes were defined as an improvement in testing, large scale implementation and spread was the accuracy of ECS on admission and a reduction in carried out in 2013, with 242 GP practices in NHS GGC readmissions within 30 days for patients aged over 65. participating. This is the largest scale MR programme in GP practice and was the first of it’s kind in Scotland in terms of measurement and spread. BACKGROUND Taking a medicine is the most common intervention BASELINE MEASUREMENT patients use to improve their health. Older people and At the outset of the project it was not possible to deter- those with long term conditions often take multiple mine how well MR was done as this data was not rou- medicines (polypharmacy) to treat and manage their ill- tinely collected as part of routine general practice. nesses. Evidence shows that there is a greater risk of Practices anecdotally felt they had good processes in error and potential harm from medicines when patients place but had no robust measurement strategy to move between care settings, resulting in 30-70% of support this. The SPSP PC MR care bundle sought to patients having an error or unintentional change in address this. their medication when their care is transferred.2 Five practices initially applied the care bundle to all Incidents of avoidable harm to patients can result in their discharges and randomly sampled ten patients per unnecessary readmissions, with an estimated 72% of month for compliance with the care bundle over 12 adverse events after discharge due to medications3 and months - this provided baseline results. Sampling was 38% of readmissions considered to be medicines related done by identifying all patients who had been dis- (61% of these preventable).4 Apart from the clear charged that month and randomly selecting 10. From patient safety risks there are also implications for profes- this the pilot practices could see month on month their sionals with 19.3% of GP negligence claims relating to results and it was aggregated up to give a collated overall prescribing and medication (3.8% of which were due to picture for all 5 practices. The 12 month baseline data supplying incorrect or inappropriate medication).5 and median value of 64% can be seen in supplementary Medicines reconciliation is an essential component of file “MR compliance baseline data”. patient safety promoting safer use of medicines with Individual practice visits were carried out to determine effective communication when patients move between if they felt the process was beneficial, establish what they care settings and is particularly important when patients had learned and what improvements they had made are admitted and discharged from hospital. There is evi- using PDSA. Consensus was sought in whether it was dence that this process does not happen reliably67with worthwhile to scale up and spread. local audits conducted in NHSGG&C reporting just over half of patients admitted in one hospital had one or more of their usual medicines unintentionally omitted DESIGN from their prescription chart.8 60% of patients had Run chart data and practice feedback (including PDSA medication discrepancies on discharge, specifically relat- cycles) demonstrated there was room for improvement ing to medicines that had been started and/or stopped and using the established SPSP PC national MR care during the admission.910 bundle was an efficient way to measure MR process reli- A robust reliable process for carrying out timely medi- ability. Practices reported it was an effective QI tool to cines reconciliation in general practice post hospital dis- improve MR in the practice and it would be appropriate charge ensures the GP prescribing record is current and to consider for NHS GGC roll out. A wider stakeholder accurate. This in turn improves the accuracy of the consultation took place with SPSP programme leads, Emergency Care Summary (ECS). The ECS is a clinical directors, the local medical committee (LMC) summary of basic important information about a patient and the pharmacy and prescribing support unit (PPSU) including a list of current medication which is extracted to explore and agree options for spread. The anticipated from the GP systems twice a day. The ECS is often used problems at this stage were around potential funding for as a source of information used to carry out medicines the work and GP acceptability for this care bundle to reconciliation on admission to hospital. Inaccurate or improve MR processes. As the care bundle was a recog- incomplete medicines reconciliation in primary care will nised national intervention tool and had tested positively result in an inaccurate GP prescribing record and there- in a small number of practices, the final care bundle fore a flawed ECS for any medicines reconciliation on design was not changed, and after multiple stakeholder admission with the potential for medication errors, agreement it was planned to offer this out as an optional patient harm and readmission.