MARCH 31, 2025 - RENEWAL DEADLINEAs a continuation of our previous article discussing our early findings with respect to areas of non-compliance that were observed during reviews of residential care services, this article will discuss additional areas of potential improvement based on continued observations by Compliance Officers.
Compliance Officers have been conducting practice reviews in the hospital setting since April 2017. With some years of experience now, the Compliance Officer team would like to share and address some feedback received from registrants who have undergone a Pharmacy Professionals Review in a hospital setting.
Once their pharmacy has been confirmed for a review, one of the pharmacy managers’ key functions is to schedule their registrant staff for their individual Pharmacy Professionals Reviews. In order to help pharmacy managers streamline the scheduling process, we’ve compiled the following list of frequently asked questions and answers.
During hospital Pharmacy Practice Reviews, Compliance Officers have observed registrants processing medication orders prior to ensuring that the patient profile was up-to-date. As pharmacists rely on the information in the patient record to assess the appropriateness and safety of medications, maintaining an up-to-date and accurate patient profile is critical for the safe delivery of drug therapy.
Pharmacy care for residential care patients is essential to our health care system and the well-being of our aging population. As the senior population size, medical complexities and number of transitions between levels of care increase, so does the probability of medication incidents and the potential for ill effects.
As a relatively new component of the Practice Review Program, Compliance Officers would like to share some of their early findings in areas where non-compliance has been observed for residential care services.
New support tools on Product Distribution and Collaboration are now available to help pharmacy technicians prepare for their Pharmacy Professionals Review under the Practice Review Program.
Patient identification verification refers to the matching of a patient to an intended treatment. It is a key activity performed by all healthcare professionals in a hospital setting. Risk to patient safety occurs when there is a mismatch between a given patient and the pharmaceutical care intended for him or her, whether the care is in the form of dispensing a medication, monitoring a patient’s drug therapy or something as simple as discussing or requesting a patient’s information over the phone.
In our Practice Review Program, Compliance Officers have come across questions from pharmacists regarding documentation requirements for emergency prescription refills (“emergency supplies”).
Did you know the College has conducted over 650 pharmacy reviews and 2100 Pharmacy Professionals Reviews in community practice since the Practice Review Program launched? As Compliance Officers continue to conduct practice reviews at community pharmacies, the College has received numerous questions regarding how to best prepare.
The Practice Review Program’s Pharmacy Professionals Review is grounded upon Board-approved focus areas that were identified as having the most impact on patient safety. In previous articles, we discussed the topics of patient ID verification, profile check, and counselling. The final focus area, documentation, ties everything together by leaving a written record of what has been done and identifies the registrant responsible for each step.