Pill Time Ltd (9011779) - Improvement action plan

Although the pharmacy team have access to summary care records (SCRs) to verify some people's medical history, they cannot show that they independently verify people's height, weight and/or BMI when issuing prescriptions for weight management medicines. And a proportion of the people it provides weight management treatments do not have an up-to-date weight and BMI on the SCR. So, information cannot be independently checked in the same way for these people. This means the pharmacy cannot be sure that it is getting all of the information needed to make safe prescribing decisions.

We currently ask the patient to upload two pictures for height and weight verification. The pictures are front facing with a date and side facing with a date. These clearly show the height and weight of the patient and allows for the prescribers to use their experience in judging the pictures so confirm they match the submitted details. The Prescribers then asses the pictures to verify height and weight. We are transitioning to a new platform which will restrict the taking of pictures to live picture capture (ie. no upload of pre-taken pictures to be allowed). Then these will be assessed by the clinical team. This will allow for independent checking of the height and weight. In the meantime, we would implement a risk-based approach on the pictures submitted and check via the use of Ai picture analysis software to assess if the pictures submitted have been manipulated or not. This will then allow the team to request further pictures prior to the assessment by the prescribers if the manipulation software flags any Ai manipulation of the On occasions where the SCR is not available, we will ensure timely two way communication occurs between the prescriber and the patient prior to clinically assessing the request. We send every new patient GP’s a letter informing of supply. We have very few patients who do not have an SCR as we only serve English patients and on the rare occasion we serve outside of this we request the details from patients clinical sources ands will follow up via adequate two way communication.