An inspector calls: GPhC might conduct ‘assurance visit’ if already ‘in the area’
A General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) inspector has revealed that the regulator might “touch base” with pharmacies in random “assurance visits”.
Pharmacies can expect “assurance calls and visits” from the GPhC on top of regular inspections, an inspector disclosed during an update to pharmacists at Avicenna’s annual conference this weekend (September 17).
GPhC professional standards inspector Eilean Robson said that making “assurance calls…allows us to touch base with a lot more people”.
She also revealed that these check-up calls could progress into visits, explaining that “if we happen to be in an area, we may turn that into a visit”.
Ms Robson was also keen to emphasise that these visits – which the GPhC started conducting during the pandemic – are “not a full-scale inspection” and are more to “get a better picture of what’s going on”.
“It’s a way of reaching out” and to find out “what’s going on out there and sort of [listen] to the concerns, as well as just being able to answer questions” from pharmacy staff, she said.
“Very random”
Meanwhile, Ms Robson stressed the “very random” process behind deciding which pharmacies receive full inspections.
“We do a random sample now which is worked out in some fancy algorithm at the GPhC”, she explained.
“You might have had an inspection eighteen months ago,” she said, but “if you come up within a random sample, you'll have one again.”
The GPhC is trying “to get a flavour of what is going on across all the different pharmacy waters out there”, she added.
Changes to inspections
The GPhC first revealed a trial of the use of random samples in inspections in July 2022, to get “adequate assurance” that pharmacies were meeting its standards across the board.
Since then, in January, the GPhC announced that it had postponed some of its pharmacy inspections due to “ongoing winter pressures”.
And in July this year, the regulator announced that it was recruiting for a new chief pharmacy officer (CPO) to lead its inspections and provide a “face and voice” for the organisation.
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) - the regulator’s regulator – flagged “concerns” about the GPhC’s “remit and approach to pharmacy inspections” last September, questioning whether the regulator was “sufficiently” addressing risks.
