Information Governance

THE COMPANY CHEMISTS’ ASSOCIATION’S POSITION ON INFORMATION GOVERNANCE

The Company Chemists’ Association has been represented on the DH/CfH working group to define the Information Governance (IG) requirements of Community Pharmacy since February 2009. All CCA Member Companies are fully engaged with the process and committed to achieving the required standards in the timescales set by the Department.

Although both the IG Toolkit and Templates are now available on the PSNC website, the CCA still has some concerns. The major issue still outstanding from multiples perspective – and this is true of AIMp members as much as it is true of CCA members – is that the Workbook and Toolkit provide little context of how IG operates in a multiple context.  As far as CCA member companies are concerned, the declarations of compliance are made by the company, and a mechanism needs to be in place for multiples’ IG Leads to ensure that declarations made by or on behalf of individual sites are accurate.  For many of the 18 IG Requirements in multisite businesses there is a significant head office component, which local pharmacists will need to have information about to be able to set their compliance level accurately.  Our members consider some of this information to be a) commercially sensitive and b) something that would serve no useful purpose in being shared other than for the completion of this exercise.  If you get the chance, please make this point to the PCTs.  We are working hard to resolve these issues and will try to keep you up to date with where we are. 

Until these issues are rectified, most companies will have published holding instructions in company bulletins that Information Governance is an issue being dealt with at Head Office, and it is likely that all requests received locally are being directed to a central referral point.

CCA centrally has sent all SHA IG Leads a list of CCA member company IG leads.  We have asked SHA IG Leads to cascade this to PCT IG Leads. If you would to contact these IG Leads, please email tim.bingham@thecca.org.uk.

Issued: January 2010