CDM
A digital solution designed specifically for Ambulance and Emergency Services to safely and efficiently manage Controlled Drugs
Case Study 2:
The Impacts and Consequences of a Coronial Inquiry on an Australian Ambulance Service.
Our award winning Controlled Drugs Management Solution (CDM) is Australia’s most widely-used, purpose built controlled drugs solution for emergency services. CDM is designed to deliver complete management of controlled drugs across a public or private ambulance service of any size. CDM includes full end-to-end controlled drug management and reporting, incident management, issue escalation and a range of other features.
CDM provides a comprehensive suite of automated processes, functions and integrations to seamlessly manage and report on medication related distribution and administrative activities.
CDM is deployed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for access at any time through the browser of any device. It is highly scalable and captures the needs and uses across an organisation down to an individual user level.
Benefits
- Have confidence in the safe and efficient management of Controlled Drugs
- Governance and Regulatory compliance
- Significantly reduce the risk of medication misuse and theft
- Eliminates paper-based systems
- Trackable and recorded information logged for reconciliation and audit reporting
Quality and Safety Standards
Implementing a Controlled Drug Management solution is an important step in improving medication management practices. Accreditation bodies in jurisdictions around the world identify improvements to medication management, especially of controlled drugs, as key areas for ambulance services to target.
Australia
In Australia the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards Guide for Ambulance Health Services is issued by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare. The August 2023 draft identifies Medication Safety as one of the eight NSQHS standards. CDM assists Australian Ambulance Services in improving their CD management to the standard required.
United Kingdom
CDM delivers the control required by Ambulance Services in England to improve their medication management rating under Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections. This capability extends to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland by assisting services to meet the standards of their respective accreditation bodies. In addition, HealthCare Software’s completion of the NHS Clinical Risk Management framework, DCB0129, assures NHS Ambulance Trusts of the solution’s low risk status. HCS’ DCB0129 document pack is available to services on request.
Canada
Quality and Safety standards are monitored at a Provincial level in Canada, such as British Columbia’s Health Quality Matrix. CDM supports Canadian Emergency Management Services (EMS) in meeting Accreditation Canada standards for EMS including real-time audits and reporting on CD transactions across the service replacing the legacy paper register system.
The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) recently conducted a pre-accreditation assessment of Ambulance Tasmania (AT) which included a review of their Medication management practices. Their report stated:
“Much work has been undertaken to automate and standardise the medication management systems across AT. Staff indicated that once the initial implementation issues were resolved that they were very supportive of the systems. The ACHS also received a great deal of verbal feedback that the system had been well received by AT’s front line clinicians and that it was both easy to use, and a gamechanger in the way we safely manage and audit our medication management at AT.”
