The
Healthcare Commission, working with the National Treatment Agency for Substance
Misuse, has published Improving services for substance misuse: a joint review. The review assessed the performance of 149 local drug partnerships
against national standards. It looked at whether local services prescribe drugs
safely and appropriately and how well they plan treatment and coordinate
services. These partnerships are responsible for drug treatment services in
England and are made up of representatives from NHS mental health and primary
care trusts, local authorities, the police, the probation service, and the
voluntary sector.
The review focused on two key areas:
- provision of community prescribing services, which provide specialised drug treatment, including planning of care and prescribing of drugs to treat drug misuse
- care planning and care coordination, which refers to the processes that need to be in place to ensure that drug treatment services work together effectively to meet service users' individual needs
The results of the joint review showed
that improvements can be made across all areas of community prescribing services
and care planning and coordination.