The role of clinical advisory boards in modern practice

Some background…

The MWI Distinct Advantage programme has been designed with veterinary practices at its heart. After taking feedback from practices across the nation, this innovative, quality service was created to save veterinary professionals time and energy that could be better spent on running and growing their practice, helping improve patient outcomes and optimising work-life balance.

Wanting to keep patient outcomes at its core and to help guide the clinical advice underpinning the MWI Distinct Advantage programme, a clinical advisory board (CAB) was created by combining the knowledge and experience of a team of independent veterinary professionals.

This team has been drawn from across the industry to reflect the wider profession in its make-up, experience, qualifications, and the type of practice they have been involved with. The CAB co-opts specific expertise as and when required to help with projects, opportunities and new developments.

How does it fit with MWI Distinct Advantage?

The aim of the CAB is best summarised as helping the MWI Distinct Advantage (DA) members to deliver the best standard of veterinary medicine possible. In the early stages, this largely involved populating a peer-reviewed formulary of medicines to support best practice.

With the formulary-based approach of the MWI DA, programme members are actively encouraged to buy from a specific list. It is clearly essential that price is not the only factor by which a product is chosen.

One of the main objectives of the CAB was to scrutinise the available products across the various active pharmaceutical ingredients and identify the best choice based on data sheet indications, available clinical research, the CAB’s clinical experience and professional pharmacological support. This review included a systematic review of the data sheets with input from specialist pharmacists, manufacturers, and experts in key areas such as parasitology and the regulatory environment. Typically, this is an activity veterinary professionals in practice do not have the time or breadth of experience to undertake on their own.

In essence, the CAB looks to understand what the best products are within a category and feed this knowledge back to the commercial team. Often the differences between the products are determined to be of limited clinical significance, and so a commercial approach can be taken.

This “formulary” approach ensures that volumes are consolidated across a limited number of products within an active ingredient category, thereby allowing better prices to be negotiated with the manufacturers and passed on to members.

The process of review is ongoing, and the CAB will continue to review new products and further active ingredient categories. It also reviews any medicines where data sheets are updated or amended and review other products if supply issues affect availability.

The CAB is not about taking away the vet’s choice of medicine, limiting product use or picking the cheapest medicines. Instead, it offers clinical governance, providing practitioners and clinical staff with the knowledge and information to support a peer-reviewed, best-practice approach to clinical cases. Although the CAB shines a light on the pricing of products as it has an important role to play in adoption of a treatment protocol, this is not the primary consideration when deciding which medicines should be included within the formulary.

MWI DA members do not have to take the advice provided by the CAB. However, those that do can be confident a group of peers with additional qualifications and extra experience in veterinary medicine – and the support from MWI Animal Health – are providing them with high-quality advice.

The CAB sees clinical governance as a framework through which practices and other organisations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment where excellence in clinical care will flourish. Ultimately, care for the nation’s animals is what drives the veterinary profession, and the CAB and MWI as an animal health solution partner are no different.

Next steps

Clearly, clinical governance is not just about the choice of medicines. Rather it is about the full scope of products and services that can be delivered in a clinical setting.

Maximising the benefit of enhancing the products and services on offer, in the most efficient manner possible, is an essential part of running a successful practice in today’s highly competitive marketplace. That could include everything from the way practices interact with their clients with marketing communications; the protocols they use to ensure the responsible use of medications, especially antimicrobials; practice hygiene procedures; how practices deliver telehealth; the way pathological samples are taken and interpreted; and the health and safety protocols in place, to name but a few.

Currently, the CAB is advising MWI DA by reviewing laboratory testing services, provision of CPD, telemedicine platforms and “innovation in practice” as a general topic. The CAB could provide advice on a whole host of other services to help clinicians deliver better veterinary medicine.

As the marketplace becomes more densely populated with products and services, it is clear that CABs will become an essential part of the modern veterinary practice. CABs provide veterinary clinicians with the guidance and support they need, and gives them back the time to do what they do best – care for the nation’s animals.