Safe & cost-effective
The clinical, pharmaceutical and economical processes within STEPSelect lead to the selection and procurement of rational, evidence-based, safe and cost-effective medicines within a comprehensive professional framework. The aim of STEPSelect is to allow medicine selection within a medicine class across a range of indications. The system puts clinical efficacy and safety dominance over cost. It is suitable for the development of formularies that will standardize cost-effective prescribing in both primary and secondary care.
The Integrated Medicines Management process highlighted that the lack of integrated product use was a significant deficiency in the existing medicines management. It was due primarily to different choices of agents within a therapeutic class and different generics and parallel imports being used in primary care. This inevitably leads to confusion with regard to the medicines that patients should be taking, and can result in omission or duplication of product use with potentially far reaching consequences. The robust linkage within STEPSelect of the clinical selection of medicines to the pharmaceutical procurement phase, aimed at products, packaging, patient information and suppliers is therefore paramount. Not only from a cost-effectiveness viewpoint, but also and even more importantly with regard to safe effective clinical use of the product.
The advantages of STEPSelect:
- Improved quality
Rational and evidence based medicine selection
All physicians use the same medicines
Dynamic process with continuous updates - Better compliance
Interactive decision support programmes - Improved safety
Rational medicine selection
The use of the same medicines and packaging in primary and secondary care - Lower cost
Considerable savings on medicines expenditure