Last week (October 1), regulations permitting hub and spoke dispensing between different retail pharmacy businesses came into effect, allowing medicines to be dispensed centrally by one pharmacy on behalf of another.
The following day, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) published a review “exploring the implementation of the hub and spoke dispensing model across registered pharmacy premises in Great Britain” including various areas needing “improvement”.
The review created a set of “targeted recommendations” for pharmacists to follow to help “support [their] compliance with the standards for pharmacy premises”.
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The GPhC analysed past pharmacy inspection reports from July 2023 to June 2025 and conducted a “targeted data capture” from inspections of “11 hubs and 17 spokes” this August.
From this, it found that “while many pharmacies demonstrated strong practices” in some areas, other areas required “further improvement”.
It identified that overall, “94% of spoke premises” and “71% of hubs” met all standards.
“Inconsistent” error reporting
But the review also highlighted a number of areas where standards needed to be improved, including issues with risk assessments, staffing, “error reporting”, compliance with legislation and patient communication.
“Recording of near-miss errors within the hub premises were inconsistent,” the GPhC found, noting that there was a “failure to consistently report and document” them.
It explained that “some pharmacies relied on the automatic systems to detect errors but lacked a formal review process or root cause analysis when errors were found”.
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The GPhC also found that the “sharing of dispensing errors between hub and spoke was inconsistent”.
There was “a reliance on the spoke” to manage errors but often the hub was “not aware of any dispensing incidents happening”, it said, highlighting that there was “no formal way of feeding back errors and enabling the team to learn from them”.
“Gaps in understanding”
In terms of staff, the review said that while it was “evident that the majority of pharmacies had clear training processes”, some spoke teams “showed gaps in understanding of [what] happened at the hub, including how and what automation was used”.
It noted that previous inspections showed that training was sometimes “not in place for team members involved in hub dispensing process” and that there was a “lack of protected time to complete training”.
In two past inspection reports reviewed by the regulator, both hubs “had team members dispensing without appropriate dispensing qualifications” because they were not “aware of the requirement”, it said.
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The review also found that only “59% of spokes actively informed people about the hub and spoke arrangements”.
“There was no evidence that patients were regularly informed about their medicines being dispensed via the hub and no pharmacies had signage to indicate this,” it said.
“Carefully consider” recommendations
GPhC chief pharmacy officer Roz Gittins said that the regulator encourages “everyone who is already using hub and spoke dispensing, or is considering using it in the future, to carefully consider [the] recommendations and how they could be implemented”.
“The examples of good practice and insights we’ve shared will help pharmacies using the hub and spoke model to consistently meet our standards for registered pharmacies,” she added.
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The GPhC said it will share the review with “key stakeholders including relevant government departments, professional leadership bodies and representative organisations”.
Until this month, hub-and-spoke dispensing was only permitted between pharmacies within the same legal entity – meaning smaller independent pharmacies have been excluded from it.
