Community Anticoagulation Services

A number of regulatory, clinical, patient safety and financial governance concerns have been raised relating to the provision of care by community anticoagulation providers. Following direction from the NEL System Pharmacy and Medicines Optimisation Board and the Quality, Safety and Improvement Committee, a thorough analysis of anticoagulation providers is currently underway, with a view to providing assurance to the commissioners of services being delivered. A full clinical review of patients under the service is required to determine if any patients have suffered harm or are at risk of harm as a result of care provided in these services. The service redesign is intended to prevent future harm to patients and to ensure that rigorous oversight of the service is conducted by the commissioner. The Clinical Harm Review will also undertake assessments to establish the clinical suitability for warfarin for each patient reviewed and consideration given for switching to a direct oral anticoagulation (DOAC) agent.

The ICB has commissioned Barts Health Pharmacy Team to conduct a Clinical Harm Review for patients prescribed warfarin and monitored by community-based providers in NEL.

In order to conduct the clinical harms review, there will be a need to access anticoagulation dosing software, hospital admission notes and GP records (where applicable) to clinically review individual patient records and determine if harm has been caused through inappropriate monitoring/dosing. Only patients who meet the clinical criteria for review will have their records reviewed.

Please could you take the following actions (once you receive the alert from the Data Controller Console) to confirm (as Controller(s)) that you are happy for the information about your patients to be shared with Barts Health NHS Trust and NEL ICB

1. Log on to the Data Controller Console

2. Review and accept the [List of the IG documents]

3. Update the Practice’s Privacy Notice to include this processing.

Please note that by accepting the DSA on the Data Controller Console, you are responsible for:

• putting in place effective procedures to manage data subject access requests (from your patients) about the processing; and
• managing your own data breach(es).

Please contact your relevant Data Protection Officer If you have any information governance concerns.
Should you wish to discuss further about the programme, please contact Trevor Beswick, Programme Lead – Community Anticoagulation Service Review (trevor.beswick1@nhs.net)

Please follow this link to download notice in full