Confidential prescribing and patient safety reports on key indicators now available free for GPs
Confidential reports designed to help you improve the quality of your prescribing and patient safety are now available for practices that contribute to the MHRA’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink.
Information for GPs:
- GP practices can receive free quality improvement (QI) reports to enable:
- patient-level case finding for contraindicated drug prescribing
- easy review of individual patient care plans
- confidential benchmarking against GP practices across the UK
- collection of evidence for annual appraisals under Good Medical Practice Domain 2 (Safety and Quality)
- the reports are available to practices contributing de-identified patient data to Clinical Practice Research Datalink, a Centre of the MHRA (see About CPRD section below)
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in conjunction with the MHRA’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) have developed confidential bespoke practice and patient-level drug prescribing reports, available for free for GP practices contributing to CPRD.
The reports provide a list of pseudonymised patients at the practice so that GPs can re-identify and review their care plans. They also show the practice’s prescription rate benchmarked against other participating GP practices.
Each report covers a selection of safety indicators. Current indicators are taken from the RCGP patient safety toolkit with input from NICE, including:
- Prescription of glitazones to patients with heart failure
- Prescription of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to patients with heart failure
- Prescription of NSAIDs to patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD)
- Aspirin monotherapy for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation
GPs are invited to take an active role in suggesting topics for future reports.
A sample report is available on the CPRD website. Dr Tommy Hunter has written a blog about how he has used the report at his own practice. Unlike much of the performance measurement information that a practice receives, this report is for practice-use only and not in the public domain.
To receive the reports, practices must first join CPRD.
About CPRD
CPRD is a Centre of the MHRA and jointly supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). CPRD provides access to anonymised UK health data for public health research. Research using CPRD data has resulted in over 1,800 publications which have led to improvements in drug safety, best practice, and clinical guidelines. The data are also used by the MHRA, in conjunction with the Yellow Card Scheme, to support the continuous monitoring of the safety of medicines and vaccines. To find out more about CPRD and the other benefits of joining, visit the CPRD website.
Further information
For more information about the new reports, please contact the RCGP lead for this project, David Mullett at david.mullett@rcgp.org.uk.
Article citation: Drug Safety Update volume 11 issue 8; March 2018: 4.