College to Introduce Practice Review Program in January 2015 Vol 39 No 1 - Spring 2014 | Jul. 4, 2014 Practice Review Program

The College of Pharmacists of British Columbia will be introducing a new Practice Review Program (PRP) that will review both pharmacies and pharmacy professionals in real time, in their actual practice setting.

The PRP builds upon the College’s existing pharmacy inspection process and establishes a new review component for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

There are two components of the PRP: the Pharmacy Review and the Pharmacy Professionals Review. The program was designed to replace the previous Knowledge Assessment Exam (KA) for pharmacists and improve pharmacy compliance to standards and guidelines set by the College. Its goal is to review all pharmacies and pharmacy professionals at least once every six years.

Pharmacy managers will be given advance notice of a review, which will allow for scheduling of all pharmacy professionals in the pharmacy, as well as completing a pre-review form for the pharmacy itself. The following four focus areas will be used in the Pharmacy Professionals Review: patient identification verification, PharmaNet profile checking, documentation, and patient counselling. These focus areas were chosen by the Board as they currently have the greatest impact on patient safety.  The Pharmacy Review process will be quite similar to the existing inspection process, and will focus on legislated physical requirements of the pharmacy.

College staff conducting reviews – called Compliance Officers – will visit the pharmacy to perform the reviews. The Pharmacy Review will be completed first, followed by the Pharmacy Professionals Review. Compliance Officers will give the Pharmacy Review results to the pharmacy manager; each individual pharmacy professional will receive their own confidential results of their Pharmacy Professionals Review. Areas of non-compliance will be documented and recorded, along with action items for correction and due dates.

All elements of a review – scheduling, results and action items – will be shared with pharmacy professionals online via email as well as the College’s secure eServices portal.

The six-year review timeframe allows for all pharmacies and pharmacy professionals currently practicing in BC to be reviewed. The PRP will be implemented in hospital pharmacies and other practice settings later in 2015.