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Commitment to Transparency

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.

Transparency Principles

In 2012 the College joined 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 College’s Transparency Framework is based on the AGRE Transparency Principles, which guide the regulatory colleges’ ongoing 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.

Transparency Framework

In January 2020 the College developed a Transparency Framework, which we believe is fundamental to our ability to regulate the profession with integrity and to our fiduciary duty to serve and protect the public interest. The framework builds on the Transparency Principles and establishes a roadmap to guide the College’s work to ensure it is fulfilling its commitment to the principles and organizational values.

Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional Tool (the Public Register)

The College’s “Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional” tool, also known as a Public Register, is a tool on our website that allows visitors to access useful information about their pharmacy and regulated pharmacy professionals. The College is required to maintain this part of the website by law.

To learn more about “Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional,” access the tool, and learn what information is made public and not made public about pharmacies and pharmacy professionals, visit the “About Find a Pharmacy or Pharmacy Professional” page on the College website.

Assessments of Pharmacies and Pharmacy Professionals

The College assess community and hospital pharmacies, drug preparation premises, community pharmacists, community 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, and criteria are publicly available to anyone and are posted on our website. This includes an explanation of the potential outcomes of an assessment, such as a pass, the ordering of a re-assessment, and referral to a College Committee.

Open Consultations

In order to help guide the development of regulations, policies, guidelines and other documents related to pharmacy practice, the College routinely requests input from registrants of the profession, the public and other stakeholders.

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 policy, guideline or other document being consulted on.

The consultation process ensures that the public, practitioners and all other interested stakeholders have an opportunity to provide feedback on new and revised documents related to pharmacy practice prior to final approval and implementation.

Complaints and Discipline Processes

Information on both the College’s complaints and discipline processes are clearly outlined on our website and accompanied by helpful and informative videos and infographics for pharmacy professionals and members of the public.

As well, the College publishes edited summaries of the decisions of the Discipline Committee in its quarterly magazine, Pharmacy Connection. The Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991, requires that these summaries be published. Full case decisions are provided via the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) dating back to October 2009. The College will provide discipline case decisions that are not available on CanLII.

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.” What information is made public and not made public about pharmacy professionals on the public register is outlined on the College website. In the interest of transparency, if there are concerns about a pharmacy professional, a yellow circle with an exclamation mark will appear on the Concerns tab of the professional’s public register profile.

A listing of upcoming discipline hearings, which include the dates, name of those involved, and summary of the allegations, are publicly available on the College website. All hearings are open to the public and, unless otherwise stated, are held at our offices in Toronto.

Collecting, Analyzing, and Sharing Data to Improve Health Outcomes

Snapshots of Opioid Dispensing in Ontario

In line with our ongoing commitment to encourage the use of data and evidence to support quality and safe pharmacy practice, the College released the Opioid Dispensing in Ontario: 2018 Snapshot and we plan to provide updated data for the most recent year on an annual basis. The snapshot, along with the key considerations outlined, is intended to provide an overall look at opioid dispensing patterns in community pharmacy in Ontario related to three areas of analysis that are considered high risk dispensing practices.

AIMS (Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety)

The AIMS (Assurance and Improvement in Medication Safety) Program is a standardized medication safety program that will support continuous quality improvement and put in place a mandatory 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 near misses via an incident-recording platform administered by a third party. 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.

Quality Indicators for Pharmacy

The College believes in freely sharing data and information to help 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 Ontario Health (Quality), has 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.

Board and Governance

In the interest of transparency, Board meetings are open to the public and we provide accessible formats and communication supports for persons with disabilities. In addition, past and future Board meeting dates, as well as agendas, materials, minutes, and post-meeting reports are publicly available and posted on our website.

Performance Dashboard

The College introduced a Performance Dashboard to monitor trends, risks and activities and to report on its progress against the priorities defined in the Strategic Framework. Produced on a quarterly basis and released at each Board meeting as part of the College’s overall organizational update, the Dashboard has become a valuable accountability and quality improvement tool for the College as we become increasingly focused on openly reporting on our performance as a risk-based regulator firmly committed to our public-protection mandate and to being an accountable steward of the public trust.

As our use of the Dashboard evolves over time, the College continues to work with other provincial health regulators and the Ministry of Health in developing a standardized performance measurement framework that will be used to measure, report and benchmark the performance of the province’s health regulatory colleges.

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Key Initiatives

Commitment to Transparency