Halo Health (9012676) - Improvement action plan

The pharmacy has not identified or fully assessed the risks associated with its services. It does not have any risk assessments or prescribing policies in place to provide assurances that the third-party on-line portal and the associated prescribers it works with are making safe prescribing decisions. It does not have processes to independently verify information supplied by people including people's weight, height and medical history. This means the pharmacy cannot be sure that the prescribing service it works with is getting all the information needed to make safe prescribing decisions.

- Develop and implement a Prescribing & Risk Management Policy, including risk assessments for each service.
Introduce a Patient Verification SOP requiring ID, weight, height, and medical history to be checked before supply.

- Establish a due diligence and audit process for third-party prescribers (contracts, annual reviews).

- Train all pharmacy staff on the new SOPs.

The pharmacy's dispensing process currently does not empower the pharmacy team members to make meaningful interventions on most of the prescription it dispenses. It largely relies on the third-party prescribing service to make clinical checks about medicines people are prescribed. And it does not have a robust process in place to make identity checks of people they are supplying medicines to.

- Create a Dispensing SOP requiring in-house pharmacist clinical checks on all prescriptions.

- Introduce a Dispensing Intervention Log to capture and review pharmacist interventions.

- Implement a Patient ID Verification Process (photo ID, address, NHS number where applicable) before supply.

- Train staff on escalation of concerns and recording interventions.