Internet pharmacies partly owned by GPs, sharing patient data or indeed any pharmacy sharing patient data when partially owned by GPs.
If you have an internet pharmacy you must ensure that your procedures are robust enough on the website to allow patients to provide informed consent to the use of their data, it must not be assumed that you can share the data with stakeholders or marketing organisations. Indeed, each time you consider sharing patient data with anyone who is not detailed in the informed consent the patient must be consulted whether this data is shared for financial gain or not. Unlawful sale or sharing of patient data is likely to result in a fitness-to-practise hearing. In addition, NHS England may conduct their own separate investigation.
If the Information Commissioner’s Office suspects, there has been a breach of the Data Protection Act they too may decide to pay the pharmacy or surgery a visit.
A major internet pharmacy contractor found themselves in this predicament after selling patient data last year to a marketing company and have been heavily fined. The result of their Fitness to Practice case hearing taking place next month should be an indication of how seriously the GPhC take the matter.
The other issue is direction of prescriptions which is always difficult to prove as there is a lot of good reasons why a new pharmacy attached to the surgery should dispense a prescription for an elderly patient who is not very mobile, or a dressing or Catheter should be dispensed by a DAC not the patients local elected pharmacy but did the surgery just send the prescriptions to the DAC to deliver or did they check with patient to ask them where they wanted the prescription to be dispensed and gain patent consent?
Written by Jackie Peck