Pharmacy context
This pharmacy is located in a business park in Bishop’s Stortford. The pharmacy is closed to the public. And it provides its services online via their website, www.curatehealth.co.uk. It currently offers a private prescribing service for the treatment of weight loss. People can access this service by completing an online consultation questionnaire. These questionnaires are reviewed by pharmacist independent prescribers (PIPs). And PIPs can issue private prescriptions for the medicines, which are then dispensed by the pharmacy and delivered to people’s homes.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy does not fully manage the risks associated with supplying weight loss medicines to people remotely. It does not always maintain records of the consultations it has with people being prescribed medicines for weight loss. And medicines are often prescribed based solely on an online questionnaire. This means that it is not always clear whether a person has been supplied a medicine which is clinically appropriate for them. The pharmacy has some routes for people to provide feedback or make a complaint about its services. But, it does not always respond to people in a timely manner. It has a set of dispensing procedures for pharmacy team members to follow to help them work safely. Team members record mistakes they make, and they put actions in place to try and prevent future similar mistakes from happening. And the pharmacy protects people’s confidential information.
Principle 2. Staff
There are enough team members to provide the pharmacy’s services safely. And those in training are enrolled on the relevant accredited training programmes for their roles. The team members are comfortable about providing feedback or raising any concerns they have.
Principle 3. Premises
The premises are secure and provide a suitable environment for providing healthcare services. And there is sufficient space to store medicines and manage the pharmacy’s workload. The pharmacy’s website provides details about the prescribers it uses and its weight loss service. But it also includes information about some treatments which the pharmacy doesn't currently offer. This may be confusing for people visiting the pharmacy's website.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy cannot demonstrate it always provides its services safely. Prescribers make some checks to verify people’s body mass index (BMI), but these checks are not always consistent. And so it cannot always show that the checks are sufficient to make a clinically appropriate supply of medicine. This increases the chance that people may receive medicines not clinically suitable for them. However, the pharmacy obtains its medicines from licensed wholesalers and stores them appropriately.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy has the equipment it needs to provide its services safely. And it uses its equipment in a way to protect people’s personal information.
Pharmacy details
Unit 1
Mead Way
Great Hallingbury
Bishop's Stortford
CM227FD
England
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.