Pharmacy context
This city centre community pharmacy is situated on a busy main road. It is open extended hours late into the evening, seven days a week. The pharmacy mainly prepares NHS prescription medicines, and it has a busy substance misuse service. The pharmacy sells over the counter (OTC) medicines and it offers other treatments using patient group directions (PGDs) online, via its website www.yourmedsdelivered.co.uk. It also provides PGD treatments following in person consultations in the pharmacy. This inspection primarily focussed on the pharmacy’s online services.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy does not manage all of the risks associated with its services. It does not have written procedures or keep appropriate records for its online services, so it can show how it supplies medicines safely. And it does not effectively monitor online sales to detect inappropriate requests, particularly in relation to OTC medicines liable to misuse and abuse. In addition, the pharmacy's responsible pharmacist records are illegible or incomplete, so it is not always possible to identify who is responsible for the services.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy’s staffing arrangements are unclear. And the pharmacy cannot demonstrate that the staff receive the right training for their roles, or are suitably qualified and skilled for the safe and effective provision of the pharmacy's services.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy’s website contains inaccurate information and people are not appropriately informed who is responsible for the pharmacy’s services. The premises are clean and suitable for delivering the pharmacy’s services. It has a private consultation room, so people can have confidential conversations with pharmacy team members and maintain their privacy. A separate private area is available for people to access the substance misuse treatment service.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy is not able to demonstrate that the medicines it sells online are safe or clinically appropriate for the people that it supplies. It does not have sufficient safeguards in place when selling OTC medicines online including those liable to misuse and abuse. The pharmacy generally sources and stores medicines safely. But it does not always complete regular checks to make sure medicines are stored at the correct temperature.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy team has the equipment and facilities that it needs for the services it provides. Equipment is appropriately maintained.
What do the inspection outcomes mean?
After an inspection each pharmacy receives one overall outcome. This will be either Standards met or Standards not all met
| The pharmacy has met all the standards for registered pharmacies | |
| The pharmacy has not met one or more of the standards for registered pharmacies |
What does 'pharmacy has not met all standards' mean?
When a pharmacy has not met all standards, they are required to complete an improvement action plan, which you can find via a link at the top left of this page. We monitor progress to check the improvements are made and inspect again after six months to make sure the pharmacy is maintaining these improvements. A new report will then be published.