Pharmacy owners and leaders have criticised online prescription platform Healthera over “misleading” website listings that they say “drive business away” from pharmacies not affiliated with the company.
In a LinkedIn post on Wednesday (November 19), Touchwood Pharmacy founder Boo Dhaliwal said that despite not being partnered with Healthera, its website “lists all of [his] pharmacy branches, causing patients to believe [they] are affiliated and encouraging them to sign up under false pretences”.
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“Practices like this are highly unethical, undermine trust and do nothing to support the integrity of our industry,” he said.
He claimed that he has “had serious concerns raised about working practices at Healthera” and that “the sector has an obligation to ensure we have healthy but fair and ethical competition”.
Healthera said that it had made changes to its website following the feedback but that its “national directory is a factual listing of all UK pharmacies”.
“Completely unethical”
A number of pharmacy owners and leaders commented on Dhaliwal’s post to voice their concerns and share similar experiences with Healthera.
Raylane Pharmacy Group superintendent Kalpesh Patel said that the company lists “all” of his pharmacies on its website and has “an ‘order your prescription’ button on the page that takes the customer through another ordering process” that has “nothing to do with” his pharmacies.
He added that he had “approached Healthera” about the issue - which he described as “clearly misleading” - and said that the company had “simply ignored” him.
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Pharmacy Mentor founder and pharmacist Saam Ali characterised the issue as “completely unethical” and said that he had heard “terrible reports from pharmacies that have been completely done over”.
Senior partner at Avicenna Sanatio LLP Tas Bhatti commented that Healthera has “had this practice for a long time” and that he “can’t understand why pharmacies still choose to partner with such unethical organisations”.
He claimed that the company has “known about this for years” and that “only when faced with legal challenge [has it] removed listings in the past”.
“Please don’t gaslight the sector - your reputation is bad enough as it is,” he added.
“Never meant to mislead”
Healthera said in a comment on Dhaliwal’s post that it does “not present any non-partner pharmacy as offering online services” and that its “national directory is a factual listing of all UK pharmacies” designed “simply to help patients find accurate local information”.
But it added that it “fully” understood “how the ‘order your prescription’ card” on listings for non-partner pharmacies “may have caused confusion”.
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Healthera founder and chief executive Quintus Liu later commented that “the page has been updated so that non-partner pharmacies will no longer display the order card” on their page, adding that the company “never meant to mislead anyone”.
“We value the pharmacy community and want to ensure our platform reflects that trust,” the company said.
“Not good enough”
However, pharmacies not partnered with Healthera remain listed on its website - and contractors have said that the steps taken by the company do not resolve the issue.
One commenter wrote that Liu’s response to the complaints was “not good enough” and asked why he would not “do the honourable thing” and remove non-partner pharmacies from the directory altogether.
“This will generate a lot more goodwill than trying to defend the facade of a public directory and using underhand tactics to drive business away from your non-members”, he added.
“Why should I have to keep monitoring a random directory that I have nothing to do with and do not wish to be a part of?” he said.
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And Totley Pharmacy owner Tajinder Singh called the company’s response “pathetic” and said that he was “thinking of joining [Healthera] but will definitely not do so now”.
He called on Healthera to “remove any chance” of patients belonging to non-partner pharmacies “being allowed to order prescriptions through [its] app” - adding that “everybody can see how this is misleading and inaccurate”.
Healthera did not respond to C+D’s requests for comment.
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It comes after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) came down on Healthera and four other companies about their advertisement of weight loss medicines following complaints in February.
The MHRA said that it had “advised some of the relevant companies…that images of, or information about, medicines that are not licensed for weight loss should not be presented as such on their webpages or materials,” adding that they have now “amended their advertising”.
