A shared care drug is one that:
- requires to be initiated by a hospital consultant/specialist and
- requires a period of stability and monitoring under the care of the hospital consultant/specialist (Secondary Care) prior to prescribing responsibility transferring to the GP (Primary Care).
The impact for the patient is that initial prescriptions will be provided by the hospital consultant/specialist.
Monitoring of the drug and/or condition is shared between the hospital consultant/specialist and Primary Care (the GP), however the patient remains under long-term review with the hospital consultant/specialist.
Shared Care Protocols (SCP’s) are developed under the auspices of the Area Prescribing Committee. They provide clear guidance to GPs and hospital consultant/specialist prescribers regarding the procedures to be adopted when clinical prescribing responsibility for a patient’s treatment with a shared-care drug is transferred from a hospital consultant/specialist to the GP
If a drug is part of a Shared Care Protocol it is classified as Amber on the Traffic Light System (TLS).