Development of a quality assessment tool for pharmacy and therapeutics committees and subsequent pilot testing

Abstract

Pharmacy and therapeutics committees (PTCs) are multidisciplinary hospital teams responsible for rational medication use. We aimed at developing and piloting an assessment tool for their operating quality. We conducted a scoping literature review in PubMed and Embase to identify potential assessment items. Their relevance was systematically rated and consolidated into the final tool. 60 relevant items were included, grouped into eight focus topics: the committee's institutional integration, member characteristics, performance indicators, meeting structure, formulary decision-making and characteristics, strategies to guide medication use and medication use evaluations.In combination with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, the tool helped the identification of improvement opportunities for a pilot hospital: adapting the committee's structure, improving the formulary decision-making, implementing strategies to guide formulary medication use and strengthening the committee's recognition within the institution. The tool successfully identified improvement opportunities for a PTC and could therefore be interesting for other hospitals.