The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has today (September 18) launched a consultation into new guidance “requiring online pharmacies to put extra safeguards in place when prescribing or supplying” high-risk medicines like weight loss drugs.
The pharmacy regulator revealed that it is “seeking feedback on proposed changes to its guidance”, which its chief executive Duncan Rudkin announced at the annual Avicenna conference earlier this month, until October 9 and plans to publish the updated guidance “as soon as possible”.
Read more: New GPhC weight loss regs: Online patient forms must be ‘supplemented’
The proposed “extra safeguards” would require pharmacies prescribing or supplying medicines “associated with greater risks including those used for weight loss” to “independently verify the person’s weight, height and/or body mass index (BMI)”, it said.
As well as verifying information through “a phone call, video consultation or by contacting the person’s GP”, draft guidance warned that online pharmacies issuing prescriptions “remotely based on a questionnaire” with no “built-in” two-way conversation are “unlikely to meet” new regulations.
Read more: Pharmacist empties Tesco of Ozempic for own private weight loss patients
It stressed that weight management medicines and drugs “known to be misused to achieve weight loss” are “not suitable to be prescribed by a questionnaire model alone”.
Under the proposed guidelines, if the patient has no “regular GP or prescriber [to] confirm that the prescription is appropriate for the person and that appropriate monitoring is in place”, the prescriber must also “carry out an individual risk-based assessment”.
Superintendents “responsible”
The GPhC’s proposals also include expanding the scope of pharmacy workers responsible for meeting guidelines.
“Currently, it is the responsibility of the pharmacy owner to meet the guidance,” it said.
“We are proposing that the superintendent pharmacist – where there is one – would also be responsible for meeting the guidance,” it added.
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Draft guidelines warned that “not following this guidance” may result in the regulator “taking enforcement action”.
“This could be against the pharmacy or the pharmacy owner or the superintendent pharmacist – or all three,” they added.
“[It] may also investigate the fitness to practise of all the pharmacy professionals involved,” the document said.
Weight loss drug crack down
The news comes after Rudkin told the Avicenna conference that the GPhC had seen “some very poor consultation practice in the online space”.
Rudkin also said that the regulator has taken insights from “media coverage”, adding that it is “hard to find a media outlet or social media outlet at the moment that isn’t regularly featuring stories about these issues”.
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This month, the GPhC also served a warning to a pharmacist after he bought “the entire stock” of Ozempic at a Tesco pharmacy he was working at for his private weight loss customers.
And in May, the regulator hit three pharmacists with warnings after they provided “high-risk” medicine using “unsafe” online patient questionnaires.
Meanwhile earlier this month, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) told C+D that it is “removing around 100 posts” advertising prescription-only medicines (POMs) on social media “a day”.
The ASA said that it is “proactively finding and removing ads for POMs, including for weight loss products, using [its] artificial intelligence (AI) based active ad monitoring system”.
The stats came as health minister Karin Smyth said that the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) is “concerned…about some online prescribing, including the prescribing of weight loss medicines by online businesses”.
Read more: Wegovy: 'I really hope the NHS crack down on this. I am forever traumatised by what happened'
And in June, health secretary Wes Streeting revealed plans for “much closer clinical oversight and regulation” around accessing weight loss drugs from online pharmacies, after C+D revealed that increasing numbers of people were turning up at A&E needing treatment after taking weight loss drugs.
At the time, C+D exclusively reported that a “young girl” was rushed to A&E for urgent treatment after presenting with life threatening symptoms after taking weight loss drug Wegovy that she had obtained through Boots Online Doctor.
