Governance

Carol founded PrescQIPP in 2010 when she was appointed as the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) Pharmacy and Prescribing lead and PrescQIPP was one of the SHA QIPP workstreams. Carol has led the development since its inception and in 2016 Carol became the CEO for PrescQIPP when it became a not for profit Community Interest Company. 

Carol represents PrescQIPP at a national level and is a member of several significant groups such as the Regional Medicines Optimisation Committee - Medicines Optimisation Prioritisation Panel, Low Priority Prescribing Clinical Working Group, NHS Clinical Commissioners Medicines Task Group, Prescribing Advisors Group (PAG), Public Health England Prescribed medicines review data group and Overprescribing subgroups. Within PrescQIPP she provides the final sign off on all evidence-based documents and resources and leads on high cost medicines, e-learning and the East of England Plus programme.

Previously in April 2013 Carol was appointed as the Director of Medicines Optimisation for the Eastern AHSN, the Assistant Director of Clinical Strategy and CD Accountable Officer for NHS England East and in April 2015 the Head of Governance for NHS England East following her role as Head of Medicines Management for numerous PCTs

In 2014 the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain awarded Carol a fellowship and in 2018 she was invited to join the NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur programme. 

Sajida heads up the Clinical team and is responsible for the development and delivery of the primary care work plan, working closely with commissioners in the PrescQIPP community to ensure that it meets their needs. She has extensive clinical experience and joined PrescQIPP as the Primary Care Lead in April 2013, after working with the programme as a Senior Pharmacist leading on respiratory projects, and substantively as the Deputy Head of Medicines Management at Bedfordshire CCG. 

Katie is responsible for quality assuring all the PrescQIPP resources before publication (including the Priorities Advisory Committee documents), preparing clinical evidence reviews for the Primary Care Rebates, and occasionally writing bulletins for the programme including the polypharmacy and deprescribing resource IMPACT.

Katie has 20 years experience as a Medicines Information pharmacist and was previously the Director of the East Anglia Medicines Information Service. She has worked closely with PrescQIPP since its inception in 2010 and joined the team substantively in April 2018.

Kevan was an experienced and well respected Medicines Procurement Specialist Pharmacist, working for East and South East Specialist Pharmacy Services, now retired. Kevan was one of the original drivers in the establishment of PrescQIPP and is a long standing supporter. In addition to acting as a non-executive director, Kevan chairs the Pharmaceutical Industry Scheme Governance Review Board.

Carole is a qualified accountant gaining both finance and commercial experience from a wide variety of business entities, Corporate, Mid-Tier, SME’s, Entrepreneurial and Family owned business as well as Charity and Social Enterprise.

In recent years, Carole has become involved in projects involving healthcare, social enterprise and spin outs from the NHS and Local Authorities. With over 25 years’ Executive board experience is now applying that experience in Non-executive roles both within Healthcare, Spin-outs and Social Enterprise.

Julie has an extensive background as a senior leader in the NHS for over 40 years, working at Chief Executive and Director level for 20 of those years across Health Authorities, PCGs and PCTs.

In 2012 she led the creation of NHS Clinical Commissioners and became its founding Chief Executive, until she retired from that role in June 2020. Through that role she developed robust working relationships across the ‘top of the office’ of the NHS, the DHSC, and many other national organisations that clinical commissioners need to work with, always ensuring that NHSCC was always member led and member driven.

Throughout her career Julie has had a keen interest in medicines optimisation issues and led the NHSCC medicines portfolio, working hard to deliver on a whole range of medicines related issues on behalf of CCG members.

She has a Masters in Health Policy and Management and has always been passionate about using her roles to be able to support improved health outcomes and experience for patients, and populations either directly or indirectly. Julie now therefore wants to use her experience in a range of roles including working as a non-executive, both locally and nationally to continue to support improved healthcare.

Gary has extensive experience of hospital, community and primary care pharmacy management. He has been involved in a number of national working groups and initiatives including the Innovation Health and Wealth implementation group, the expert panel: Putting QIPP into action: Reinvesting at least £100 million through quality and effective prescribing, NICE MPG1: Developing and updating local formularies and the NICE service-specific advisory group for: Commissioning biologic drugs for the treatment of inflammatory disease in rheumatology, dermatology and gastroenterology. He is currently a standing member of the NICE expert panel associates. 

In his current role as Head of Medicines Management for Sheffield CCG he leads an award winning multidisciplinary team with an impressive track record of innovation and delivery and also works with Medipex and the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network as an innovation scout. 

Jane Freeguard is Head of Medicines Commissioning for the three CCGs in Worcestershire.  Jane has worked in primary care since 1994, starting in a hospital pharmacy team with the Welsh Prescribing Support Project supporting practices in the beautiful Welsh valleys.  Her role as Medicines Commissioner has evolved from early posts as practice pharmacist, PCG/PCT Pharmaceutical Adviser and Head of Medicines Management. 

A key priority for Jane is commissioning services that allow for the introduction of new roles for pharmacists across all providers.  This includes a Medicines Optimisation Enhanced Service offered to practices in Worcestershire.  Currently 59 of 65 practices employ or contract their own practice clinical pharmacist, where they are quickly becoming indispensable members of the Primary Care Teams.

Email: janefreeguard@worcestershire.nhs.uk 

Joanne has been the Medicines Optimisation Lead for primary care commissioning in Wakefield for 15 years requiring her to work at many levels and across various sectors to help patients get the best from their medicines through safe and cost-effective approaches.

Joanne is involved in shaping new models of care locally that will ultimately utilise the skills of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to add value to the Multi-Speciality Community Provider models.

Email: jofitz83@gmail.com

Laura is the Strategic Lead Pharmacist for NHS Vale of York CCG, where she leads on the medicines optimisation strategy for the organisation. Other roles include being the Chair of the local Medicines Commissioning Committee, the professional lead for Non-Medical Prescribers and a NICE Medicines and Prescribing Associate.

Details to follow.

Michael has been a Head of Medicines Optimisation/Management for 10 years. Prior to that he worked as an independent prescriber in GP practices delivering personal medicines optimisation for patients. Along with the independent prescribing qualification Michael has diplomas in both COPD and Asthma and is an active member of local prescribing committees.

Email: michael.dennis@nhs.net

Paula is a pharmacist with experience in a wide range of healthcare settings, including acute hospitals, mental health, learning difficulties, community services, primary care, community pharmacy, social care including inspection of care homes, pre-hospital, and secure environments including prisons, police custody and SARCs.

Paula has been Pharmaceutical Adviser to both West Midlands and East of England Ambulance Trusts, and is currently Chief Pharmacist for Mid-Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (p/t) and Chief Pharmacist for G4S Health (p/t). In her CCG role, Paula has more recently broadened her commissioning role to include clinical prioritisation of services with responsibility for development of Service Restriction Policies and management of IFR service, referral management (Central Referral Service) and transformation of care pathways.

Email: paula.wilkinson@nhs.net

Richard Croker is currently the Deputy Director for Medicines Optimisation for NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, responsible for ensuring clinically and cost-effective prescribing across 128 GP practices with an annual spend of £180m.

He also leads the programme for pathology optimisation, using many of the principles of medicines optimisation.
Richard also sits on the Devon Clinical Policy Committee, making evidence-based clinical commissioning decisions.

Richard qualified as a pharmacist in 1996 and worked in the community sector until 2002, when he joined the NHS prescribing team in North Devon.

Richard’s interests include the use of information technology to improve health outcomes and cost. He received a MSc in Health Informatics in 2008, studying how information could be used to better identify variation in prescribing costs.

He has implemented a number of systems designed to improve care within the CCG, including the Electronic Prescription Service, Scriptswitch decision support software, and a local web-based prescribing reporting system.

He is also currently works two days a week at the DataLab, University of Oxford, developing the openprescribing.net tool, and is a member of the national Medicines Optimisation Oversight Group.

Sanjay Desai is the Associate Director of Medicines Optimisation for the four CCGs in Berkshire West (Newbury and District, North and West Reading, South Reading and Wokingham CCGs) where he leads on medicines optimisation, aimed at improving quality, outcomes and value for patients and the public, from their medicines. He heads up the team of Pharmacists, Dietitian and a PA, which support practices, across the four CCGs, and also to work with secondary care, for issues relating to prescribing across the interface. 

Sanjay has been working within primary care now for the past 16 years, in various roles.

Sanjay is also seconded into the University of Reading, School of Pharmacy, one day a week as a Senior Teaching Fellow, lecturing on the Independent Prescribing course for Nurses and Pharmacists.

Email: sanjay.desai@nhs.net

Steve is currently the Director of Medicines Management, Clinical Policies, and Pharmacy for Southern Derbyshire CCG. He began his career in community pharmacy where he spent the majority of that time managing an independent health centre pharmacy.

Steve's primary care pharmacist experience began as a sessional pharmacist employed by a GP fundholding practice. With the inception of PCGs, Steve began to take on more strategic roles and has moved through various PCGs and PCTs chiefly in Derbyshire from a practice pharmacist up to Assistant Director of Medicines Management. Previous roles have included Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer.

Email: steve.hulme@southernderbyshireccg.nhs.uk

Susan originally worked in Hospital Pharmacy, progressing to managing the clinical pharmacy services in one of the busiest Trusts in the country. She was an honorary lecturer at Keele University for a number of years, managing the Clinical Pharmacy Diploma and setting up the Masters Research Programme. Susan moved to the East Midlands Healthcare Deanery as a Commissioning Manager, before moving into Primary Care as a Practice Pharmacist. She was Head of Medicines Optimisation for East Staffordshire CCG from 2012-2018, before taking up her current role as Senior Medicines Optimisation Lead Pharmacist South East Division, Staffordshire CCGs.

Susan is a a member of the Burton Hospitals Drug and Therapeutic Group, the South Staffs Area Prescribing Group and the Local Pharmacy Network, giving her the opportunity to influence strategic decisions in line with evidence-base and national guidelines.

Susan manages and leads a highly successful Medicines Optimisation team with demonstrated QIPP achievement year-on-year and is also a Medicines and Prescribing Associate for NICE.

Elizabeth has worked in the NHS for many years and currently works as a pharmacist with NHS Bath and North East Somerset CCG.

She also works for NHS Improvement as one of 3 national project leads for Healthcare Acquired Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance, supporting delivery of the UK AMR strategy.

Passionate about improving quality in healthcare (what does ‘Good’ look like?), Elizabeth has recently joined the Health Foundation Q community – a network of people with improvement expertise sharing ideas, enhancing skills and collaborating to make health and care better. Within Bath and North East Somerset Elizabeth leads the CCG programmes for Antimicrobial Stewardship, Acute Kidney Injury and Safer Care Culture – an initiative to improve the reporting, learning and sharing of safety related incidents occurring in primary care practice.

Elizabeth is an Antibiotic Guardian – are you? Pledge at antibioticguardian.com

Email: elizabeth.beech@nhs.net

After starting her career as a community pharmacist, Gill moved to hospital pharmacy where she has held many clinical and managerial roles over 20 years, ending up as deputy chief pharmacist. Gill then moved into primary care to gain experience in that sector, working in West Norfolk PCT, and then as head of medicines management at Norfolk PCT, then CSU. 

Gill moved to NICE in 2013, working in the medicines education team on the NICE associate programme. The programme provides a network of support and resources to those working in the fields of medicines optimisation and patient safety.

Email: gill.eddy@nice.org.uk

Steve Pike has been a GP in West Sussex for thirty years and is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

He is the Clinical Lead for Medicines Management at NHS Coastal West Sussex CCG and has recently been awarded Senior Fellowship of the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management (SFFMLM), which recognises his significant contribution to medicines optimisation both locally and nationally over more than twenty years, with cross-organisational collaborative working with organisations including NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC), NHS England, NHS Improvement, General Medical Council, Competition and Markets Authority, National Prescribing Centre, and NICE where he is both a NICE Clinical Expert and a NICE Medicines and Prescribing Associate.

He is also a current member of the South Regional Medicines Optimisation Committee (RMOC) and NHSCC Medicines Task Group.