Mohammed Habib, registration number 2071490, has received a 12-month suspension from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) for performing “transactional” prescribing and failing to “adequately consider the possibility of medication dependence and misuse”, among other things.
In a remote hearing from January 27 to February 4, the committee heard that the registrant was focused not on “providing person centred care”, but on “meeting targets”, prescribing medicines on 62,689 occasions “using an online questionnaire based prescribing model”.
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Habib “relied principally on the information received in an online questionnaire”, the hearing document said, and failed to request face-to-face consultations to “adequately examine the clinical need for medication” as well as failing to put “adequate safety-netting in place”.
The regulator also heard that he prescribed medicines when he “knew or should have known that the patient had already made repeated orders for the same medicine or other medicines”.
According to the hearing document, the committee found all 12 allegations against the registrant proved.
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The regulator accepted that Habib “made full admissions to the committee” and “demonstrated significant remorse and apologised for his actions, in particular where patients were affected”.
And it acknowledged that he “engaged with the regulatory process throughout, including engaging in significant reflection and remediation”.
But it stressed that his misconduct “lasted for over two, and nearly three years, despite him being alerted to failings in the UK Meds prescribing model” – the pharmacy where he worked.
“Under a minute”
The registrant began working at the online pharmacy in November 2019 as a pharmacist prescriber before becoming the joint clinical lead in July 2020, the document said.
During his time at UK Meds, an analysis of Habib’s prescribing found that “28,816 prescriptions [were] dealt with in under a minute, 12,960 in less than 3 minutes and only 16,570 dealt with in more than 5 minutes”.
And the committee found that in these instances, he prescribed “in circumstances where the time taken would not have been sufficient to evaluate the suitability of the medicines to the patient”.
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It was alleged that the registrant “failed to prescribe medicines in accordance with... the relevant guidance on prescribing from the General Medical Council (GMC), the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)”, the council heard.
And he failed to “access, [or] attempt to access, patient records” and to “refer patients back to their GP”, the document said.
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Among numerous allegations, the document also set out that the registrant’s approach to prescribing “was transactional in that he was processing patient requests by reference to a patient completed questionnaire rather than prescribing in accordance with UK prescribing guidance”.
“The council submitted that he was prioritising the commercial transactions undertaken by UK Meds over the safeguarding of the patients’ and reliance on his clinical judgement,” it said.
The committee said that this was demonstrated by “the speed of prescribing” and “the uncritical and total reliance on questionnaire based consultation mostly uncorroborated”.
“Fatal dose”
The document also alleged that Habib failed “to ensure proper prescribing by other prescribers in respect of approximately 14,259 prescriptions” in his position as clinical lead.
And on one occasion in June 2020, he “prescribed 28 tablets of propranolol” to a patient who later died in June 2021 from an overdose of the drug - “her death was found to be suicide”, it said.
“It is not suggested that [the patient] obtained the fatal dose from the registrant but it became apparent at the inquest that she had obtained this medication (which [she] had used in past overdoses) from 7 different online pharmacies,” the document said.
“The registrant was identified as one of those who had prescribed to [the patient] and gave evidence at the inquest,” it added.
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The regulator accepted that Habib “took full responsibility for all his actions while working for UK Meds” and in his written statement he “described himself as profoundly disappointed for not appreciating the shortcomings that he displayed at the time”.
After “extensive reflection”, Habib realised that the UK Meds prescribing model “was fundamentally incapable of supporting safe prescribing decisions” and that he “had personally failed to facilitate real time interactions with patients...and observed that there had been little time to follow up or assess a patient’s need for treatment,” the document said.
“Meeting targets”
But the GPhC stressed that “while the Registrant has developed an understanding that what he did was wrong, he has not yet demonstrated that he understands why he acted as he did, in way that would give a committee reassurance for the future”.
“The registrant was not providing person centred care but was focused instead upon meeting targets [and] it is implicit in all the findings that the registrant did not communicate effectively either with patients or colleagues,” it said.
The committee added that Habib’s misconduct “put patients at significant risk of harm” and as part of his employment was a supervisory role, he did “not act to prevent bad practise”.
And it said that “his insight is recent and incomplete and remains fragile until he has demonstrated that he can maintain his insight and continue the personal and professional development he has begun”.
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The GPhC found that his fitness to practise was impaired but decided that “the registrant’s misconduct... fell short of being fundamentally incompatible with continued registration”.
It concluded that a suspension for a “period of 12 months was necessary to demonstrate how seriously the committee took the misconduct in this case and to send a message [of] how close the registrant had come to being removed”.
Read the determination in full here.
