New GPhC weight loss regs: Online patient forms must be ‘supplemented’
The pharmacy regulator has announced plans to consult on a raft of “additional safeguards” that online pharmacies offering weight loss drugs must provide, including verifying information provided by patients.
“Challenging issues” around online pharmacies prescribing drugs using questionnaires are set to be addressed by new regulation proposals from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) in the “next couple of weeks”, its chief executive Duncan Rudkin yesterday (September 8) announced.
“We are currently finalising some proposals for change to our guidance on online services,” he told delegates at the annual Avicenna conference held in London.
“The level of public appetite for online services continues to increase but equally, questions about risk need to be answered - we know that there are significant additional risks when reliance is placed exclusively on online forms, effectively online questionnaires,” Rudkin said.
He added that the GPhC consultation will be “proposing to strengthen and expand on the guidance for owners and superintendents”, emphasising the importance of “having two-way dialogue” with the patient.
“If that can't be enabled by an online form, then that form must be supplemented in some way or a different level of consultation needs to be chosen, because this can't be a one-way traffic of information,” Rudkin said.
He added that “there will need to be additional safeguards put in place to ensure safe prescribing” of weight loss medicines, which have a “particularly higher risk…of serious harm”.
He said that the GPhC’s new guidance will ask prescribers to “verify information provided by patients, whether that's phone call and agree or consultation or by contacting the person's GP”.
Off-label Ozempic
Rudkin told delegates that the GPhC has “worked with a range of other regulators to make sure that the sector understands the impact of the shortage alert in relation to Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists”.
“Specific medicines where we've taken action in relation to weight loss have included Saxenda and also Ozempic and Rybelsus where they've been prescribed off-label,” he said.
He told the conference that the crackdown comes after the GPhC has seen “some very poor consultation practice in the online space”.
He 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”.
Regulation crackdown
In May, the regulator hit three pharmacists with warnings after they provided “high-risk” medicine using “unsafe” online patient questionnaires.
Meanwhile last week, 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.
