Inspection outcome: Standards met
Last inspection: 17/04/2019
Pharmacy context
This is an independently run community pharmacy. The pharmacy was taken into new ownership approximately 6 weeks previously and is now one of 29 owned by the same company. The pharmacy is on a parade of locally run shops and businesses, in a residential area, in the London borough of Ealing.
The pharmacy dispenses between 5,500 and 6,000 items a month, As well as the NHS Essential Services, the pharmacy provides Medicines Use Reviews (MURs), New Medicines Service (NMS), Monitored Dosage System (MDS) trays for 70 people, seasonal influenza vaccinations, and a delivery service.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy’s working practices are safe and effective. Its team members understand their roles and responsibilities and keep people’s information safe. The pharmacy team deals with errors and mistakes responsibly. It records the mistakes it makes and highlights products with similar names to reduce the risk of staff selecting the wrong one. But, the records do not have a lot of detail and the team don’t review the records regularly. So, it could be missing opportunities to spot any patterns or trends and ways of preventing the same mistakes from happening again.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy team manages the workload well. Team members work well together. They are comfortable about providing feedback to pharmacists and managers and are involved in improving the pharmacy’s services.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy is a suitable place to provide healthcare. But some areas of the pharmacy, including dispensary drawers, floors and back shop areas need maintenance.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy generally provides services safely and tries to make its services available to everyone. Staff give people the advice and support they need to help them use their medicines safely and properly.
In general, the pharmacy manages its medicines safely and effectively. But, it was not scanning products with a unique barcode, as required in law.
The pharmacy generally stores its medicines safely. And it carries out checks to help make sure that its medicines are fit for purpose. But, it does not always properly label medicines which have been removed from their original packaging. And it may not always respond promptly to drug recalls. This could mean that the team are not able to identify all stock affected by drug recalls or safety alerts.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy has the equipment and facilities it needs to provide services safely.
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 do the summary findings for each principle mean?
The standards for registered pharmacies are made up of five principles. The pharmacy will also receive one of four possible findings for each of these principles. These are:
| The pharmacy delivers an innovative service and benefits the whole community and performs well against the standards | |
| The pharmacy delivers positive outcomes for patients and performs well against most of the standards | |
| The pharmacy meets all the standards | |
| The pharmacy has not met one or more standards |