Karsons Pharma (1090819)

Pharmacy context

This is a community pharmacy in a convenience store on a busy main road in a largely residential area of Rochester. In addition to providing NHS dispensing services, the pharmacy provides NHS services such as the New Medicine Service, the Pharmacy First service and the Hypertension Case Finding service. It provides a flu and COVID vaccination service using patient group directions. And it uses a van to administer vaccines to the wider community. It supplies medicines in multi-compartment compliance packs to a large number of people who need this support. And it delivers medicines to some people’s homes. It also provides supervised administration of certain medicines. And it provides a low-volume face-to-face private prescribing service for conditions such as urinary tract infections, period delay and other common infections. This was a reinspection of the pharmacy following an inspection in December 2025 where the pharmacy was found not to be meeting Standards 1.6, 3.4 and 4.3. An Improvement Notice was issued on 23 January 2026 and was subsequently deemed to have been complied with in March 2026. Following the Improvement Notice, the pharmacy installed shutters to secure the registered pharmacy premises when the pharmacy was closed, and the shop was open. It also ensures medicines requiring safe storage are kept secure. However, it has not sustained all of the improvements previously made. It does not consistently ensure that medicines requiring refrigeration are stored appropriately or that expired medicines are removed from dispensing stock in a timely manner. The pharmacy does not always properly maintain the records it is required to keep, including accurate private prescription and responsible pharmacist records. In addition, it does not consistently ensure that team members follow its standard operating procedures. As a result, there is an increased risk that errors may occur and that patients may not always receive safe and effective care.