The EAHP Board, elected for three-year terms, oversees the association’s activities. Comprising directors responsible for core functions, it meets regularly to implement strategic goals. Supported by EAHP staff, the Board controls finances, coordinates congress organization, and ensures compliance with statutes and codes of conduct.
Implementation of a new work circuit in monography consultation of immune-mediated diseases of the pharmacy service
European Statement
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Author(s)
ALBA MARIA MARTINEZ SOTO, MARIA ONTENIENTE CANDELA, CARLES INIESTA NAVALON, PATRICIA ORTIZ FERNANDEZ, PILAR FERNANDEZ-VILLACAÑAS FERNANDEZ, ANABEL HERREROS HERNANDEZ, GEMMA MARTINEZ SOTO, CARMEN CABALLERO REQUEJO, MAYTE GIL CANDEL, ELENA URBIETA SANZ
Why was it done?
– Guide the pharmacist in the development of an individualised follow-up strategy for patient evaluating the frequency with which appointments should be established in the consultation of Pharmaceutical Care.
– Use the information from the specific questionnaires to detect possible failures therapeutic.
– Use the results obtained in the PROs to direct the recommendations pharmacotherapeutic to perform, which will be assessed in a multidisciplinary committee of immune-mediated diseases.
– Promote higher quality pharmaceutical care.
What was done?
Implementation of a circuit to improve pharmaceutical care and follow-up pharmacotherapeutic, incorporating the stratification of
patients according to the “Model of Stratification and Pharmaceutical Care for Diseases Immune-mediated Inflammatory Diseases” (MAPEX) and the use of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs).
How was it done?
1. Selection of patients to include.
2. Design a database in Access for the collection of stratification data and PROs.
3. Selection of specific and generic PROs.
4. Stratification of active patients according to the MAPEX methodology at the beginning of the implantation and in patients who start during the follow-up period will be stratified at the baseline visit.
5. Establish a strategy for carrying out questionnaires (PROs) in consultation.
What has been achieved?
An Access database has been created that incorporates the blocks established by the MAPEX model with each of its variables broken down, allowing us to obtain the patient global score.
3 pathology-specific PROs have been selected (RAPID3 in rheumatoid arthritis, PSAID12 in Psoriatic Arthritis and BASDAI in Ankylosing Spondylitis) and a generic one, EuroQol-5D-5L.
The follow-up strategy based on the stratification was selected as the one proposed by the MAPEX model.
To carry out the PROs, those patients with arthropathies that are were under treatment with biological drugs.
It was decided to pass a specific PRO according to his pathology and the generic having a baseline intake, another at 16 weeks and another a year.
What next?
Design a study to measure the results in terms of quality of care obtained with this new circuit.
USE OF LINKED DATA SOURCES IN DYNAMIC DASHBOARDS TO VISUALISE HOSPITAL PRACTICE DIFFERENCES IN MEDICATION USE AND OUTCOMES
European Statement
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Author(s)
Rawa Ismail, Jesper van Breeschoten, Michel Wouters, Anthonius de Boer, Alfonsus van den Eertwegh, Maaike van Dartel, Caspar van Loosen, Doranne Hilarius
Why was it done?
Most drugs obtain approval based on limited numbers of highly selected patients and mostly surrogate outcomes. Little is known on hospital variation on the use of new treatments in daily clinical practice. Benchmark information can be used to limit between hospital variation and provides real world evidence on the value of these treatments.
What was done?
In the Dutch Institute for Clinical Auditing (DICA) medicines project, administrative data on the use of expensive drugs from hospital pharmacies were linked to clinical data from national quality registries and hospital declaration data. Data were visualised in six dynamic dashboards (lung cancer, breast cancer, rheumatic disorders, colorectal cancers, gynaecological cancers and metastatic melanoma), leading to insight into expensive drugs use and clinical outcomes in real-world practice.
How was it done?
The three data sources were linked using patient-specific data and provide real-world insights in anti-cancer drug use and outcomes. After linkage, data were validated by individual sessions with hospital pharmacists and medical specialists.
What has been achieved?
Hospital pharmacists and medical specialists gained insight into expensive drugs use and treatment patterns in patient groups, compared to other hospitals. The dashboards also contain information on outcomes such as toxicity, emergency admissions, time-to-next treatment and users receive signals when their use of expensive medicines deviates from the benchmark. An example of the information provided by the dashboards was the number of stage IV non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with only one or two gifts of pembrolizumab. All hospitals received a report on this subpopulation to improve their treatment approach. Other findings were differences in the adjuvant treatment of stage III colon carcinoma patients and the treatment duration of trastuzumab/pertuzumab as adjuvant treatment in breast cancer patients.
What next?
The DICA medicines project is an example of good practice as it reuses available data sources without any additional registration burden. In the future, the dashboards will be extended with survival data and PROMs data. The focus of the program in the next year will be to include all hospitals in the Netherlands and to extend the dashboards with more features.
THE ADDITION OF A COST ANALYSIS CHANGES THE OUTCOME OF A TENDER (submitted in 2019)
European Statement
Introductory Statements and Governance
Author(s)
Camilla Munk Mikkelsen
Why was it done?
Including a CA in the evaluation is time-consuming and I wanted to evaluate whether the obtained drug recommendation was different from the result we could have achieved without the inclusion of a CA. The CA process includes data collection from clinicians within resource consumption per drug, including the costs of time usage of physician, nurse and patient, transportation expenses, monitoring costs, blood tests, co-medicine, utensils, shipping and hospital facilities. When a CA is included it is possible to take the derived costs associated with treatment of different drug dispensing forms and specific costs of treatment with various analogue drugs into account to achieve a recommendation upon the lowest total price including the tender price and the derived costs associated with the treatment.
What was done?
Tenders are made on ATC-level 5, but clinically equivalent therapeutic areas are evaluated on ATC-level 4. The analogue competition is an important strategic tool when conducting tenders and elaborating national recommendations on therapeutic areas (TA). Since 2017 the evaluation of TA has been based on a clinical evaluation, an economic evaluation and a tender. Previously the call for tenders was based on clinical evidence only. To evaluate whether the addition of a cost analysis (CA) to a tender evaluation would alter the drug recommendation of TA, a re-evaluation of the processed TA, evaluated from October 2018 until October 2019, was made on multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and severe asthma.
How was it done?
The drug recommendations on TA made in the period was re-evaluated. Results from the cases with multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and severe asthma were evaluated on clinical evaluation, tender price and finally with or without the CA.
What has been achieved?
From October 2018 to October 2019 three TA have ended the evaluation process. The recommendation of severe asthma had a similar outcome regardless of the process used. For multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, the CA altered the drug recommendations.
What next?
In order to balance resource consumption on performing CA and the economic impact on the outcome, the plan is to identify TA where it isn’t meaningful to conduct a cost analysis. In all other areas a CA will be included in the standard procedures.
CENTRALISED ONLINE REGISTRY FOR PATIENT WITH METASTATIC COLORECTAL CANCER TREATED WITH REGORAFENIB (submitted in 2019)
European Statement
Clinical Pharmacy Services
Author(s)
Vanesa Alonso Castro, Beatriz López Centeno, Daniele Alioto, Angela Gil Martin, Ignacio Martin Casasempere, Maria Segura Bedmar, Ainhoa Aranguren Oyarzábal, Maria Jose Calvo Alcántara
Why was it done?
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has developed the ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (ESMO-MCBS) to assess the magnitude of clinical benefit for cancer medicines. In the CORRECT trial, regorafenib has an ESMO-MCBS score of 1 (questionable benefit). It is necessary to assess the effectiveness and safety of regorafenib treatment in real clinical practice.
What was done?
To describe the implementation of a centralised registry (CR) for all patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) being treated with regorafenib in a Regional Health Service (RHS).
How was it done?
A working team including oncologists, hospital pharmacists and RHS professionals developed the CR for patients with mCRC starting treatment with regorafenib in 2019. The variables selected were: age, sex, ECOG, primary tumour location, number of metastatic sites, presence of liver or brain metastases, RAS-mutation status, BRAF-mutation status, previous lines, follow-up variables (dose, type of response and adverse events), date and reason for withdrawal.
What has been achieved?
The CR is available for all professionals in the RHS in April 2019 and it is compulsory to include all patients starting treatment in 2019. Forty-nine patients were included (59.2% males). The median age was 68 years. The baseline characteristics of the patients were: − 36.7% and 63.3% of patients had ECOG 0 and 1 respectively; − 79.4% had the primary tumour in the left colon; − 36.7% had 3 or more metastatic sites; −71.4% and 2.0% had liver and brain metastases respectively; − RAS gene was mutated in 57.1% of patients and undetermined in 2.0%; − BRAF gene was mutated in 4.1% of the patients and undetermined in 34.7%; −in 65.3% of patients regorafenib was the fourth line or later therapy. With median treatment duration of 2.5 months, 42.9% of patients had discontinued treatment: 30.6% had progressive disease, 8.2% had adverse events and 4.1% had died.
What next?
The experience obtained with this registry has allowed us to know the use profile of this drug in all hospitals of RHS. A comprehensive assessment of the collected data and a longer follow-up period are necessary to assess the effectiveness and safety of regorafenib treatment in real clinical practice.