New Prescribing Committee To Help With Safeguards
MEDIA RELEASE
Rt Hon Wyatt Creech
Minister of
Health
6 October 1999
NEW PRESCRIBING COMMITTEE WILL HELP WITH SAFEGUARDS ON NEW PRESCRIBING
A new committee with clinical expertise is being set up to monitor and assess new prescribers as part of Government safeguards and quality controls on the extension of prescribing rights.
"Legislation has just been passed giving designated health professionals the ability to prescribe prescription medicines. It has one aim – to get more health care to more people as early as possible," Health Minister Wyatt Creech said today.
"A range of measures will ensure prescribing is of the highest quality, is safe and cost-effective.
"A New Prescribers Advisory Committee is being established under section 8 of the Medicines Act to scrutinise nurse prescribing proposals. The committee will be multi-disciplinary.
"Other groups seeking prescribing rights will also have their applications considered by the New Prescribers Advisory Committee.
"We're currently seeking nominations for the group – it will include clinical expertise and consumer representatives.
"The committee will scrutinise proposals for prescribing rights, justification for the additional prescribing rights, education, qualifications, and range of medicines it would be appropriate for the professions to prescribe."
ENDS
Terms of reference for the New Prescribers Advisory Committee
The role of the New Prescribers Advisory Committee will be to:
establish, in consultation with the health professions,
generic criteria which any health professional group must
meet in preparing an application for prescribing rights (eg,
the competency and education requirements that a profession
must attain in order to seek registration as a prescriber by
the relevant health occupational registration body
etc);
assess applications from health
professional groups seeking prescribing rights,
including:
the potential risks and benefits to
consumers from extending limited prescribing rights to the
professional group;
whether the proposed
competencies, education (ie qualifications) and training
requirements developed by the relevant health professional
registration body are adequate to ensure safe and competent
prescribing by the professional group;
whether
arrangements for continuing education and training,
monitoring and assessment, and registration by the relevant
health professional registration body are adequate to ensure
that prescribing practices by the professional group
continue to be appropriate and safe;
whether the
classes of medicines proposed by the professional group for
prescribing rights are appropriate, and whether the
prescribing of these classes of medicines will be adequately
covered in the proposed training and education
programmes;
provide recommendations to the
Minister of Health, on the basis of the Committee’s
assessment of an application, as to whether a health
profession should be granted limited independent prescribing
rights;
advise the Minister of Health on any
terms and conditions that should be imposed on new
prescribers in order to maintain patient
safety.
ENDS