Online pharmacies censured for risking patient safety

Websites selling prescription medicines are putting patients at risk by not following safety procedures, the UK’S healthcare regulator has said.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) reprimanded four online pharmacies: Doctor Matt, Frost Pharmacy, I-GP and White Pharmacy.

Doctor Matt has been suspended until June after it was found taking less than 20 seconds to assess a patient’s claim for medicine.

Frost Pharmacy has been warned about prescribing large numbers of asthma inhalers without carrying out proper patient checks, while I-GP Ltd has been told to improve how it verifies the identity of patients.

Inspectors have restricted what medicine White Pharmacy (pictured) can prescribe after finding that it was issuing a “high volume” of opioid-based painkillers without thoroughly checking patient histories.

Other problems included wrong medicines prescribed, poor communication with GPS and inadequate recording of medical histories.

The crackdown is part of a wider investigation into the 43 pharmacies that are registered to trade online in the Uk.Professor Steve Field, who leads the CQC’S online prescribing inspection team, said: “We expect the same standards of quality and safety to be met as we would see in more traditional GP settings - this is exactly what people deserve”.

His team’s work has been praised by Helen Stokes-Lampard, head of the Royal College of GPS, who said: “We cannot tolerate a laissez-faire attitude towards dispensing of prescription medication; they are not sweets”.