Quality Indicators for Pharmacy

To support its mandate to serve and protect the public, the College is responsible for encouraging continuous quality improvement within the profession of pharmacy. With better data and information, both pharmacy professionals and the College can make evidence-informed decisions to improve the quality of pharmacy care in Ontario.

In order to better understand the impact of pharmacy care on patient outcomes, the College, in partnership with Health Quality Ontario (HQO), have established the first set of quality indicators for community pharmacy in Canada. These indicators, which will be publicly reported, will provide the public with a clearer picture of the overall quality of pharmacy care in Ontario and support quality improvement efforts by pharmacy professionals and the College.

Quality indicators already exist in other areas of the health system, such as long-term care and primary care, and a great deal of work has already been done to establish indicators in hospital pharmacy. However, it is relatively new territory for community pharmacy in Ontario, which is why it is the focus of this current indicators work.

The indicators were developed by an expert panel that included patients, practicing pharmacists, academics and other health system stakeholders, and launched by the College and HQO at a Symposium on Quality Indicators for Pharmacy in June 2019.

An Expert Panel Report on Quality Indicators for Pharmacy has been developed to reflect the work of the panel and describe the indicators. In addition, the College has developed a Quality Indicators for Pharmacy leaflet that provides a short summary of the indicators as well as their importance and relevance to pharmacy.

The expert panel was formed following a Quality Roundtable co-hosted by the College and HQO in 2018 to develop the guiding principles for establishing a set of quality indicators for pharmacy.

 

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Next Steps

The College plans to use the indicators for public reporting and quality improvement.

First, the College will continue to engage with key stakeholders such as patients, frontline pharmacy professionals, corporate pharmacy sector leaders, academia and health system data experts as it moves forward with implementation, including developing an understanding of what tools and resources pharmacy professionals will need to support quality improvement.

If you are a pharmacy professional who would like to provide feedback on next steps for quality indicators, please complete our Involvement in Quality Indicators for Pharmacy Next Steps survey.

The College values your input as we move forward with this important indicators work that will provide the public and health system with information about the quality of pharmacy care and support the sector in gaining a better understanding of pharmacy’s impact on patient outcomes.