The Ontario College of Pharmacists is committed to enhancing transparency, which is an essential enabler of public accountability and risk-based regulation. As the regulator for the profession of pharmacy in the province, the College is responsible for ensuring that Ontarians have access to relevant and important information about pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacies, and a clear understanding of regulatory processes and decision-making.
Transparency is not just about making additional information public – it is also ensuring that the information we share is clear, accessible and easy to understand. The College strongly believes that transparency, accountability, and integrity are pillars of good governance, and as such, are values identified in our 2024-2028 Strategic Plan.
The following are ways the College lives up to its commitment to transparency:
AIMS (Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety)
The AIMS (Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety) Program is a mandatory medication safety program that supports continuous quality improvement and puts in place a consistent standard for medication safety for all pharmacies in the province.
Its goal is to reduce the risk of patient harm caused by medication incidents in, or involving, Ontario pharmacies.
A core component of the program is the anonymous recording of incidents and good catches (near misses) via a third-party incident-recording platform. The College has committed to making aggregate, de-identified provincial level information on medication incidents and near misses recorded by pharmacies available publicly so it can be shared across the pharmacy sector and broader health system to support continuous quality improvement to reduce the risk of medication incidents.
Assessments of Pharmacies and Pharmacy Professionals
The College assesses community and hospital pharmacies, and drug preparation premises, as well as the regulated pharmacy professionals who practice there including community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, hospital, family health team, and long-term care pharmacists, and hospital pharmacy technicians. Operational assessment results are posted to the public register.
Pharmacy and regulated pharmacy professional assessment approaches, frequency, types, processes, potential outcomes and criteria are publicly available to anyone and are posted on our website.
Board & Governance
In the interest of transparency, Board meetings are open to the public and are generally held at OCP’s head office unless otherwise indicated. Members of the public are welcome to observe the meetings and instructions on how to do so will be included on each Board meeting agenda. Past and future Board meeting dates, as well as agendas, materials, minutes, and post-meeting reports are publicly available and posted on our website.
College Performance Dashboard
The College Performance Dashboard reports on how well the College is tracking towards its annual targets and trends on key monitoring measures. Produced on a quarterly basis and released at each scheduled Board meeting, the Dashboard is a valuable accountability and quality improvement tool for the College.
Complaints & Discipline Process
Information on the College’s complaints and discipline processes are clearly outlined on our website.
The College publishes summaries of the decisions of the Discipline Committee. Full case decisions are provided via the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) dating back to October 2009. The College can provide discipline case decisions prior to October 2009.
Moreover, the College publicly posts information about concerns that are relevant to a pharmacy professional’s suitability to practice on its public register, Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional tool. What information is made public and not made public about pharmacy professionals on the public register is outlined on the Public Information on Pharmacy Professionals page. A listing of upcoming discipline hearings, which include the dates, name of those involved, and summary of the allegations, are publicly available. All hearings are open to the public and are held virtually.
Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional Tool (the Public Register)
The College’s Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional tool, also known as the Public Register, is a tool on our website that allows visitors to access important information about their pharmacy and regulated pharmacy professionals. The College is required to maintain this by law. To learn more about Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional tool and what information is made public and not made public about pharmacies and pharmacy professionals, visit the How to Use Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional page on the College website.
Open Consultations
To guide the development of regulations, policies and other documents related to pharmacy practice, the College routinely requests input from registrants of the profession, the public and other partners through open consultations.
Documents that are available for consultation are posted on our website with clearly specified submission deadlines. To ensure transparency and encourage open dialogue, the feedback we receive is published in accordance with the posting guidelines. The College reviews and considers all feedback before finalizing the regulation, policy or other document that is being consulted upon.
The consultation process ensures that the public, registrants and all other interested partners have an opportunity to provide feedback on new and revised documents related to pharmacy practice prior to final approval and implementation.
Transparency Framework and Principles
The College has developed a Transparency Framework that is based on Transparency Principles from the Advisory Group for Regulatory Excellence (AGRE), an organization made up of health regulatory Colleges with a mission to identify opportunities and make policy recommendations which will strengthen public confidence in self-regulation through research, debate and policy development. The Transparency Framework guides our decisions about publicly available information.
There are eight AGRE Transparency Principles:
- The mandate of regulators is public protection and safety. The public needs access to appropriate information in order to trust that this system of self-regulation works effectively.
- Providing more information to the public has benefits, including improved patient choice and increased accountability for regulators.
- Any information provided should enhance the public’s ability to make decisions or hold the regulator accountable. This information needs to be relevant, credible and accurate.
- In order for information to be helpful to the public it must be timely, easy to find and understand, and include context and explanation.
- Certain regulatory processes intended to improve competence may lead to better outcomes for the public if they happen confidentially.
- Transparency discussions should balance the principles of public protection and accountability, with fairness and privacy.
- The greater the potential risk to the public, the more important transparency becomes.
- Information available from Colleges about registrants and processes should be similar.