Map lays naked all 100-plus of the UK’s worst-performing pharmacies

Almost 150 chemists within the UK have been reprimanded for offering sub-standard care over the previous yr, MailOnline can reveal. 

Nine have been topic to enforcement motion for breaching strict regulatory pointers.

One – Allcures Pharmacy in South Ockendon, Essex – carried out insufficient security checks earlier than doling out ‘excessive threat’ medicine, leaving sufferers ‘liable to abuse, misuse and overuse’.

Another, Burwash Pharmacy in Hove, Sussex, posed a ‘severe threat to affected person security’ due to its ‘insufficient’ threat administration and safeguarding round prescribing medicines on-line, together with for weight reduction. 

MailOnline has flagged all 143 of the offending chemists on an interactive map. 

All 750-plus pharmacies which have been reviewed are additionally listed in a desk under, permitting you to see precisely how they’re judged by the regulator. 

Our evaluation comes on the again of a significant push to ease stress on GPs by encouraging Brits to go straight to their pharmacist as a substitute.

Under blockbuster NHS plans designed to liberate hundreds of thousands of docs’ appointments, chemists have been given new powers handy out prescriptions for seven widespread illnesses.

It means sufferers battling minor diseases, akin to a sore throat or earache, can now bypass their GP.

The Prime Minister, whose mom ran his native pharmacy in Southampton, labelled the scheme a ‘mini revolution in excessive avenue healthcare’. 

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) carries out common inspections of all 11,000-plus pharmacies within the nation.

It charges them with one total consequence — both ‘requirements met’ or ‘requirements not all met’ — primarily based on 5 classes.

These are governance, staffing, premises, companies and gear.

All of the requirements will have to be met for a pharmacy to obtain a requirements met consequence. 

When pointers are breached, pharmacies are given an motion plan ordering them to enhance.

Further enforcement motion can then be made on chemists who fail to overtake their companies after six months.

This can embody imposing situations on premises doling out medicine. 

In excessive circumstances, pharmacies could be compelled to cease promoting prescription-only medicine.

All 143 pharmacies judged to haven’t met the requirements are marked orange on our map, which could be zoomed out and in.

Nine of the entire — marked crimson — have been topic to enforcement motion by the GPhC.

All inspection stories included in MailOnline’s evaluation have been printed between February 1, 2023 and February 1, 2024. 

Some of the inspections themselves would have occurred earlier than February 2023 due to the size of time it may possibly take between inspection and publication of the report.

This signifies that among the stories from pharmacies included on the listing who’ve had a ‘not all requirements met’ will not be their most up-to-date inspection from the GPhC.

They might have since overhauled their companies to the satisfaction of the GPhC. 

Gareth Jones, director of company affairs on the National Pharmacy Association instructed MailOnline: ‘The overwhelming majority of pharmacies meet the GPhC’s exacting requirements. 

‘Of these deemed to not be absolutely compliant, most points are administrative and don’t have an effect on sufferers. 

‘The overwhelming majority of points are rectified shortly and the necessity for any enforcement may be very uncommon.

‘Of course, affected person security is everybody’s prime precedence so we work with our members each day to make sure they’re secure and dependable always and meet the extraordinarily excessive requirements rightly set by the regulators.’

Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat‘s well being spokeswoman, instructed MailOnline: ‘It is worrying to see a small variety of pharmacies failing to satisfy primary requirements, giving a nasty identify to the overwhelming majority of them that do a superb job providing walk-in healthcare on our excessive streets.

‘The authorities must do extra to make sure requirements are upheld, in addition to stopping the pharmacy closures which might be leaving some communities with out the straightforward entry to medicine and well being recommendation they want.’

Of the 143 reprimanded websites whose stories have been printed, 118 have been bricks and mortar chemists, whereas 25 have been web or distance promoting pharmacies.

Online pharmacies make up simply over three per cent of the UK’s chemists however accounted for 17 per cent of those that failed to satisfy the regulator’s requirements. 

The GPhC has lengthy been involved with the shortage of ‘acceptable checks in place’ and ‘failures’, akin to overprescribing, linked with internet-based pharmacies.

Last month, it revealed there have been 263 open Fitness to Practice probes involving on-line pharmacies, representing over 18 per cent of its open caseload. 

Since 2019, a complete of 1,985 issues regarding on-line pharmacies have been elevated to Fitness to Practise instances, it added.

The GPhC receives just below 3,000 issues per yr, on common, which means on-line pharmacies have accounted for roughly 13 per cent of all complaints logged during the last 5 years.

A spokesperson for the GPhC instructed MailOnline: ‘We set requirements for registered pharmacies in Great Britain and by inspecting pharmacies we assess if they’re assembly these requirements.

‘The overwhelming majority of pharmacies do meet all of the requirements when inspected.

‘A pharmacy not assembly all the requirements will often have to finish an enchancment motion plan and are then re-inspected. 

‘We can use our statutory enforcement powers if the required adjustments are usually not made, or in conditions the place there’s a severe threat to affected person security.’

Between February 1, 2023 and February 2024, the GPhC carried out 120 routine inspections of neighborhood and on-line pharmacies, it added. 

Of these, seven are not on the register and 11 have been topic to enforcement motion.  

It comes as 9 in ten chemists in England have signed as much as the Pharmacy First scheme and have recent powers to deal with sufferers.

It might be supplied by each excessive avenue and on-line pharmacies, who will undertake the service by way of a video appointment and ship the prescription within the publish. 

Since December, pharmacists have additionally gained powers to dish out contraceptive drugs to girls.

A wider vary of skilled pharmacy employees may present the Blood Pressure Check service. 

These additional obligations are designed to ease pressures on GPs. 

However, in components of the nation, chemists are already rammed as a whole lot have been compelled to shut. Pharmacy our bodies blame NHS underfunding, employees shortages and a crumbling GP service.

 

Just 11,414 neighborhood pharmacies providing key NHS companies stay — the bottom stage since data started in 2015/16. Almost 400 shut their doorways in 2022/23 alone, statistics present.

Real-time NHS England knowledge reveals the depend as of December 31, 2023 could also be as little as 10,273.

Industry leaders have labelled the figures ‘alarming’ and warned sufferers might be compelled into making longer journeys for important remedy or ‘miss out all collectively’.

Meanwhile, GP numbers have plummeted in recent times. There have been 27,487 GPs in December, down 6.3 per cent (from 29,320) in 2016. This is regardless of the inhabitants rising by round 2million over the identical interval.

This has led to an appointment disaster on the whole apply, with sufferers being compelled to endure the 8am scramble — with solely 4 in 10 securing identical day appointments and three in 10 compelled to attend greater than per week, in line with newest knowledge. 

Others should full an internet e-consult to even attain their apply within the first place.

It has compelled the Government to hunt for options — akin to introducing new cellphone strains to make it simpler to contact surgical procedures and the Pharmacy First scheme, in a bid to ease demand on GPs.

Members of the Pharmacists’ Defence Association, which represents 1000’s of pharmacists within the UK, additionally revealed they’re frightened that ‘the hurried launch’ of the scheme will lead to a spike in violence and abuse from the general public, whose expectations may have been raised.

NHS England solely made the software program required to function out there to pharmacies on on Wednesday, the day it launched, the union mentioned.