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Pharmaceutical care: Overview

Prescription drugs play an essential role in modern medicine. Used in the treatment of various diseases, they have become an increasingly significant component of Canada’s health care systems. ºìÁì½í¹Ï±¨has established the Pharmaceuticals Program to better understand issues related to drug use, patient safety and the provision of care in Canada.

National Prescription Drug Utilization Information System (NPDUIS)

CIHI’s National Prescription Drug Utilization Information System (NPDUIS) provides access to comprehensive and comparative pan-Canadian information on the use of prescribed drugs, focusing primarily on publicly financed drug benefit programs. 

NPDUIS provides access to

  • Standardized information on prescription drug use and costs from across jurisdictions to inform management of drug plans 
  • Information that supports exploration and analysis of the interplay among plan design, formulary listings and drug utilization 
  • Information that supports analysis of policy decisions and their impact on drug utilization 
  • Trends on utilization over time and across jurisdictions

ºìÁì½í¹Ï±¨is working on a multi-year project to consolidate pan-Canadian prescription drug data (public, private, hospital and cancer) into a modernized information system and make it available to decision-makers and researchers to maximize its use for decision-making purposes. This work requires collaboration with provinces and territories, as well as with organizations such as Canada’s Drug Agency.
 

Pharmaceutical Data Tool

This interactive tool is designed to make key pharmaceutical information more comprehensive for stakeholders’ analytical and policy needs.

The Pharmaceutical Data Tool

  • Provides information on the use of and spending on publicly funded pharmaceuticals across Canada
  • Provides information on the designs, payment structures and formularies of public drug programs in Canada 
  • Enables comparable analysis of federal, provincial and territorial drug program trends, designs and coverage

National System for Incident Reporting (NSIR) 

CIHI’s National System for Incident Reporting (NSIR) allows facilities to anonymously report medication (Rx) and radiation treatment (RT) incidents. NSIR does not collect identifiable patient or provider information, nor does it identify participating facilities. It supports an environment of sharing and learning to improve patient safety across facilities in Canada. 

NSIR data supports a variety of quality improvement activities, including 

  • Identifying safety strategies at the local level 
  • Summarizing an organization’s own data for internal reporting, as well as data on incidents from across the country to allow for collective analysis and solution development 
  • Supporting stakeholders in the development of system-wide alerts and recommendations 
  • Providing an anonymous messaging tool to let participating organizations share lessons learned 

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