A national program that has reached more than 200,000 people including veterans and war widows, is the winner of the Health Organisation (public and not-for-profit) category of the National Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) Awards 2008. The program, the Veterans’ Medicines Advice and Therapeutics Education Services (Veterans’ MATES), is run by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA).

Winners across the awarded categories – media and the sub-category of trade media, student, health organisation, community and poster – were announced at the biennial National Medicines Symposium 2008 dinner in Canberra last night. Senator the Hon Jan McLucas, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing, presented the Awards.

The National QUM Awards are an initiative of the National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) and the Pharmaceutical Health And Rational use of Medicines (PHARM) Committee to recognise the QUM achievements of a variety of programs and activities.

Veterans’ MATES contributes to QUM through patient-specific prescriber feedback. It is an integrated QUM program which uses DVA’s administrative health database to identify veterans who may be at risk of medication misadventure.

The database covers 310,000 veterans and war widows or widowers, and holds data on all pharmaceutical, medical, hospital and allied health services. Veterans’ MATES then provides information to assist veterans and their health practitioners in improving the management of their medicines.

Veterans’ MATES has resulted in clinically significant changes in prescribing and an increase in the medication-related services delivered by medical practitioners. It has also delivered greater interaction between general practitioners (GPs) and their veteran patients and improved health outcomes for some veterans.

Employing QUM principles, Veterans’ MATES uses an evidence-based, collaborative approach to identify needs at different levels - for instance, at the individual, organisation and policy levels - and in different stakeholder groups, such as health professionals, veterans, carers and policy planners.

Veterans’ MATES has reached 20,400 GPs, 171,400 veterans and more than 8,500 pharmacists.

In addition, the work of the Safe Medication Practice Unit (SMPU) at Queensland Health was Highly Commended in this category. The SMPU uses a systems approach to prevent and address adverse drug events that result in patient harm by improving medication-related practices in key area.

The systems approach acknowledges that errors are generally not intentional, are inevitable because of human limitations and are wired into systems. The SMPU works to change those systems to reduce error prone situations; make it harder for people to make mistakes; ensure if a mistake does happen,checks and balances are in place to detect it; to provide information at point of prescribing, and provide standardisation and include forcing functions to promote safety.

The SMPU is a team of multidisciplinary staff which engages and collaborates with multidisciplinary stakeholders at hospital/service delivery level. The entry was submitted by Elaine Lum.

QUM is one of the central objectives of Australia's National Medicines Policy. QUM means selecting management options wisely, choosing suitable medicines if a medicine is considered necessary, and using medicines safely and effectively. The definition of QUM applies equally to decisions about medicine use by individuals and decisions that affect the health of the population.

ENDS

National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) is an independent, non-profit organisation for Quality Use of Medicines funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.