What is Pharmacy Quality Commitment® ( PQC) ?

Pharmacy Quality Commitment ®is a continuous quality improvement (CQI) program that was developed for the purpose of providing risk management services to pharmacists.  It promotes a non-punitive, blame free environment that recognizes that pharmacists are human and that humans make mistakes. The core philosophy of Pharmacy Quality Commitment® is that pharmacists and pharmacy staff will work as team members in an organized effort to evaluate past failures of quality, and commit to policies that have been developed to prevent future failures of quality.  It strives to reduce medication errors in the pharmacy by offering structures and methods for improvement and a feedback system that allows the pharmacist to elevate the quality of patient care. 

The approach of Pharmacy  Quality Commitment® asks that pharmacists adopt a new paradigm for professional practice; one that takes a systems view of patient care matters, rather than viewing the provision of pharmaceutical products and services as merely a series of isolated individual events.

The Two parts of PQC.

Pharmacy Quality Commitment® is compromised of the Sentinelsm workflow program, which offers a standardized workflow for the pharmacy to set up based on 20 pharmacy “best practices”, and the Quality Managersm   on-line audit system that enables a pharmacy to identify, document and analyze workflow through a simple, web-based data entry system.

The program directs that the pharmacy collect daily records of quality-related events (QREs), which include near misses, mistakes and errors, on an audit form and enter this information into the pharmacy’s unique database. Each pharmacy’s secure database data entry page is accessed via login passwords unique to that pharmacy.  The database page drop down menu-driven form mirrors the data collection form and facilitates the capture of report data with standardized fields. Each quality-related event takes under a minute to report.  Once information is recorded for a few weeks, the pharmacy is able, with the click of the mouse, to see graphed and charted results of entered data. Armed with information, the pharmacy and is now able to track medication errors and quality failures within the pharmacy and establish plans of improvement.