Chronic Medicine Management Audit

The audit in which I have been involved during my placement is about Chronic Medicine Management (CMM). The audit is conducted by the healthcare authority of my workplace to improve the process of managing chronic medication before and after the surgery. In today’s medical field, chronic illness is a matter of great concern. Chronic illness is the long-lasting health condition, that last more than three months in patients, even sometimes it exists throughout the life of patients (Martire & Helgeson, 2017). Chronic illness comes with age. In the UK the increasing number of ageing population is the reason behind high number of chronic illness in society. In this context, the audit is expected to be highly effective in terms of developing innovative techniques of management of long-term drugs that are used before and after surgery, that will improve patients’ health condition by meeting their complex needs.

In this audit, health professionals first conducted the clinical pre-authorisation process, in which the disease-specific guidelines and formulary (sets of drugs) standards are followed and maintained. The overall objective of this audit is to determine the process in which chronic medicines can be best used to improve chronic condition of patents. In this process, health care authority determined and excluded the non-evidence-based long-term drugs. In addition to this, evaluation of new drugs, analysis of the process of therapeutic interchange, evaluation of generic substitution of each chronic drug used in the hospital, specific investigation on ineffective drugs, evaluation of drug-to-drug interaction and analysis of drug to disease interaction is also done during the audit. As mentioned by Mol, Roumen. & Scheltinga (2018), chronic medicine management is one of the most preferred techniques in modern medical field that assists health professionals to improve their knowledge on choosing right drugs for patient to reduce the long-term effects of these illnesses on their health. In this audit process, health professionals have made a written record of patient's ongoing medication in terms of collecting data on what drugs and therapies are provided to patients on regular basis. Additionally, the special investigation also is done on usefulness of ingestion of long-term drugs in pre as well as post-operative condition. It is expected that the overall audit on Chronic Medicine Management (CMM) would be highly useful for improving the treatment process of chronic patients and meeting their complex needs.

Reference list:

Brummel, A. & Carlson, A.M., (2016). Comprehensive medication management and medication adherence for chronic conditions. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 22(1), pp.56-62.

Detoni, K.B., Oliveira, I.V., Nascimento, M.M., Caux, T.R., Alves, M.R. & Ramalho-de-Oliveira, D., (2017). Impact of a medication therapy management service on the clinical status of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 39(1), pp.95-103.

Martire, L. M., & Helgeson, V. S. (2017). Close relationships and the management of chronic illness: Associations and interventions. American Psychologist, 72(6), 601.

Mol, F.M., Roumen, R.M. & Scheltinga, M.R., (2018). Comparing the efficacy of targeted spinal cord stimulation (SCS) of the dorsal root ganglion with conventional medical management (CMM) in patients with chronic post-surgical inguinal pain: the SMASHING trial. BMC surgery, 18(1), pp.1-6.