Improving Compliance

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) carries out regular checks on health and social care services and is changing their approach to these inspections. At the moment their focus is on services that [...]

Antimicrobial resistance has become a hot topic in recent years, with the emergence of strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. In the past, new antibiotics have been developed to [...]

Who issues medication safety alerts? The Medicines Healthcare Products and Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for issuing medication and medical device safety alerts. How are these [...]

Local Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are being established by clinical commission groups (CCGs) to facilitate and encourage GP practices to work together in clusters with community, mental health, [...]

The EU Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU) (FMD) was adopted by the UK in 2011 and will be implemented on 9th February 2019, when the Delegated Regulation on ‘safety features’ will be [...]

The Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) was discussed in the April 2018 edition of Ashtons Pharmacy News. This legislation will take effect from February 2019 and from this date most prescription [...]

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) having come into effect on 25th May 2018, Ashtons, like many other companies, has been ensuring we are fully compliant with all new data [...]

The Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care Interventions (EEPRU) has conducted a report on the ‘Prevalence and economic burden of medication errors in the NHS in England’, [...]

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published a briefing on substance misuse, which summarises the concerns it identified following the inspection of 68 residential detox services. Many of the [...]

Public Health England has highlighted the significantly higher rates of smoking among people with serious mental illness, which is 40.5% compared with 16.9% for the general adult population [...]