The New Pharmacy (1030960) - Improvement action plan

The pharmacy works with a third-party provider which offers a prescribing service including for weight-loss medicines. During the inspection, staff appeared unsure about what services the third-party services offered. And the pharmacy could not sufficiently demonstrate that it had fully considered the potential risks prior to starting the service. Following the inspection the pharmacy provided a risk assessment but this was brief and did not cover all the potential risks. For example, it did not cover the individual medicines provided, training, knowledge and skills of staff, and monitoring and follow up of treatment. The pharmacy has not demonstrated that it has sufficient assurance that people prescribed with weight-loss medicines by the third-party prescriber routinely have their weight, height and/or body mass index independently verified.

We have reviewed the GPhC distance selling guidance and the responses from the third-party provider namely Healthera, who have provided a prescribing protocol. We have further considered the potential risks of offering such a service on our website. We have sufficient training amongst our key pharmacists for such services in store and are assured that Healthera meet the guidelines and have a robust verification process. However we feel that it is prudent to remove the service at this time from our website till such a time that their service is fully compliant with the standards we must meet where monitoring and follow up form conclusively parts of the service. We have asked Healthera to disable the Clinic service from our website.