Drug Dictionary

The Drug Dictionary can be used to maintain your practice formulary.

You can create a practice-wide drug formulary in one of three ways:

  • From the Vision front screen, you can select Modules - Drug Dictionary Utilities. This lets you compile a list of the most commonly used drugs in your practice which can later be reduced or enlarged and used as a basis for your formulary
  • You can start a formulary from a blank list
  • You can import an existing formulary, for example, from another practice or a CCG, and modify it for your own use. We strongly recommend you export the formulary in order to keep it as a stored copy.

First you Create a list of prescribable items for formulary. Once the list has been created from your prescription history, you next decide which of the listed entries should be included in the Drug Formulary, by choosing, for example, the most frequently prescribed items.

You can then View and Print existing Formulary. Maintain Formulary lets you add or remove individual therapy items to or from the formulary.

You must change the security settings of the staff who are going to use the formulary, so that their default selection of drugs is from the formulary.

We also advise you restrict access to Drug Dictionary Utilities in Security to system managers, in case a user inadvertently selects Formulary – Remove All Formulary Entries, or Replace Formulary with List.

For those who are set to use the formulary, on adding a drug in Consultation Manager, Vision initially searches for the drug in the practice formulary. If a drug match is not found in the formulary, you have the option to look at the full Gemscript drug dictionary. From Consultation Manager you are also able to add and remove items from the formulary on an ad-hoc basis.

You need to update the formulary as new drugs are added to the drug dictionary.

You can run Validation of Drug Dictionary / Formulary reports to list various items on your system:

  • Unprescribable formulary items
  • Unissuable repeat masters
  • Invalid drug codes
  • Discontinued repeat masters.