Fitness to Practice 183 – linked to 83 Online Pharmacies – It worrying to see these numbers, isn’t it? As more and more online pharmacies open, there has been a rise in fitness to practice measures for pharmacists and prescribers who have worked in or are working for an online pharmacy.
Pharmacy is changing and we have to accept it is being digitalised and more and more people are accessing healthcare online. However, that does come with significant risks to the patient and for the pharmacy owners.
The risks associated with online pharmacies are far greater and more difficult to manage than in your traditional pharmacy but it can be done. By focussing on risk assessing the business and services being provided online, safeguarding and protecting vulnerable adults and children and practicing safe prescribing within a known competency will reduce the risks.
In my own experience working with an online pharmacy and implementing such measures, it was very clear to me that there was very little support and guidance from GPhC for pharmacy owners at that time compared to now. It was also apparent that they hadn’t caught up with the advancement to pharmacies moving online and releasing guidance in time for pharmacy owners to ensure they do it correctly. Now due to the shortcomings in the support and guidance, GPhC face many online pharmacies practising poorly. Furthermore, not all online pharmacies practise poorly due to lack of guidance, some are focussed on the monetary gain from this business and do not balance patient safety and profit, for those owners and pharmacists rightfully so, questions need to be asked.
GPhC investigations have found that there are more inexperienced prescribers in online pharmacies which is causing concerns over prescribing practices. This is also more worrying since they have released recently news on the two-year post qualification criteria to be lifted for becoming an independent prescriber, meaning that a newly qualified pharmacist can now enrol to become an independent prescriber – would this not lead to further inexperienced prescribers?
I do believe that you can have an online pharmacy and adhere to a high standard of patient safety, governance, safeguarding and risk management. But not every pharmacist is trained to create risk assessments, standard operating procedures and lead governance issues – they only know how to implement them if they are already given to them.
I believe more support and guidance should come from GPhC and they should work with pharmacy owners to help them improve their standards and risk management. Tighter control of issuing a license for an online pharmacy should be implemented where there is clear evidence of risk management and clinical governance is in place beforehand. This should see a reduction in investigations and fitness to practice issues around online pharmacies.
See below the latest guidance published by GPhC for online pharmacies