Published by Computachem Services

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I was glad to see your contributor, John Skyllas, decided to join the majority of Australia's Community Pharmacies, and strive to become accredited with the Quality Care Pharmacy Program.
I was also happy to see him acknowledge that the program is probably in the long-term interest of our profession, and that our industry should strive to maintain and improve the standards of quality of what we do.
However, much of the remainder of his article descended into hyperbole and misinformation, not to mention naivete.
(See John Skyllas original article by following this link)

To remind readers, the QCPP materials consist of a Reference Manual, Pharmacy Standards Manual, Team Standards Flipper, Video, CD-ROM, PSA Professional Standards & S2/S3 Standards, and the AIPM Business Plan template CD-ROM.
Hardly an endless list!

The original manuals had some updates in 2000 (chiefly the amalgamation of the PSA standards listed above) and 2001 saw the addition of standards for Internet & Mail-order dispensing, as well as a standard for maintenance of Standards, and reporting to owners.
The purpose of the minor revisions to the rest of the program was to remove duplication and to streamline the process.
The suggestion that the purpose of a review was to make the program more difficult is nonsense that is unworthy of an intelligent readership.

Successful accreditation requires demonstration to an independent assessor that all mandatory parts of the program have been met, as well as at least 80% of the remaining standards.
In other words, if you don't want to do a Business Plan, or have a structured policy for recruitment, or do annual staff reviews, you may choose not to do them.
You won't get 100%, but as long as you get 80% of the non-mandatory standards you will be accredited. Personally, I'm not sure why anyone would think it's a good idea to have no plan, or to recruit in a haphazard fashion, or not to tell your staff what they're doing well, or what they're not, but then again, the world is a wonderful, diverse place, and it takes all types.

I would point out that not having a Privacy policy would be a breach of the Privacy Act as it applies to a healthcare provider, and that many of the standards are simply a reflection of legislation governing the practice of pharmacy, or reflect the PSA Code of Conduct that most Boards adopt as their ethical benchmarks.
Having a standard to check off is a convenient way to ensure that legal requirements are maintained. I would also point out that a business that did not have a checking process for Occupational Health & Safety would have some extremely difficult questions to answer in the event of an accident.

The outcome of the program is not to require a constant stream of reports, although some reports are inevitable, but to provide an environment in which quality is monitored and maintained.
How many mistakes are made by staff claiming "No-one told me I had to do that" or "No-one told me I had to do this that way".
If it's written down, there's no argument. How much time and money is wasted on fixing problems like that?
Isn't it better to write it down once than to fix it however many times in the future?

How does the Guild, on behalf of it's pharmacy owner members, convince government that they will not get a better system than one in which pharmacists are accountable for the conduct of a pharmacy, than if it can demonstrate assessable quality standards?
How do we convince them that a certain level of remuneration is required for a service unless we can say "This is how it's done, and this is how all QCPP-accredited pharmacies will do it on all occasions" unless we have standards that are independently assessed?

How can conducting a business according to best practice standards not improve efficiency and profitability?
Which standards do we leave out, if we're going to leave some out?
Is it not important to have a clean, well-lit pharmacy?
Is it OK if there's not enough pharmacists to safely handle the workload? Should we let untrained staff handle S2's in however they think is the best way?
How long will we retain S2's an S3's if we are not seen to have standards, and be accountable in maintaining them?

John Skyllas says things like endless and countless and never and ridiculous and unnecessary.
But he doesn't say that this standard should go, or that that standard is redundant, or that we don't need a record of how we did this or when we did that or what happened to upset Mrs Bloggs when she was in the other day.

If he, or any of your readership can tell me what's wrong with specific aspects of the program, or why a particular feature is unnecessary, I would welcome the feedback.
Making sensationalist, imprecise statements like 'It's all ridiculous and they must act now' helps precisely nobody.

Editor's Note: If any reader has comment on this subject, please send by e-mail to neilj@computachem.com.au and it will be published in the next edition.