The pharmacy regulator last week announced that it is developing a new policy on its use of powers allowing it to “disqualify” contractors from owning pharmacies in the future and that it will close a “limited number” of cases because it is not “in the public interest to progress them”.
The PDA welcomed the commitment to create a policy for disqualification when “pharmacy owners fall short of standards”, stressing that this must be “robust and effective”.
But it called for transparency from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) on which pharmacy owners the closing cases relate to.
Read more: Revealed: Half of open contractor ‘disqualification’ cases to close
In a statement issued last week (July 25), the PDA pointed to the regulator’s rationale that outstanding cases where the pharmacy owner has already removed all their premises from the register should no longer be progressed.
It said that the issue of open cases where the removal of premises from the register is no longer be available to the regulator “does need to be resolved”.
But it added that “at the very least, the names of these owners should be published” since the concerns related to when these were registered premises “rather than this information be withheld from the public”.
Read more: GPhC to halt ‘limited number’ of pharmacy owner disqualifications
It comes as C+D today exclusively revealed that the GPhC plans to close almost half of its open disqualification cases against pharmacy owners.
When asked by C+D which pharmacy owners these relate to, the GPhC previously said that it does not routinely publish details of open cases.
Responding to the PDA’s calls today, the regulator stressed that its publication and disclosure policy states that it will not publish details of cases unless they reach a hearing and it therefore has no further comment.
“Long overdue”
PDA director of defence services Mark Pitt said that a policy on disqualifying owners who “fail to meet standards and demonstrate unacceptable behaviours” is “long overdue”.
“While an individual pharmacist failing to meet standards would know they risk having their fitness to practise (FtP) questioned by the regulator and potentially their career as a pharmacist ended, it has often felt like no matter how inappropriately a community pharmacy owner behaves, there will be no meaningful consequences,” he added.
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Pitt pointed to examples of pharmacy owner behaviour previously highlighted by the PDA where “as far as [the PDA knows] no such action has happened to the owners concerned”.
These include “continued failure to meet standards…, defending racist behaviour, systemic failure to pay locums…, pushing commercial targets over patient needs and denying patients access to NHS service by closing pharmacies for avoidable commercial reasons”, he said.
“The GPhC must use this opportunity to show pharmacy owners that they will face the same degree of scrutiny and consequence of pharmacy regulation that individual registrants already operate with every day,” he added.
Read more: GPhC to pilot ‘independent complaint handling service’
The PDA urged the regulator to develop a policy that “will adequately protect patients, support the proper provision of NHS services and maintain the reputation of the pharmacy sector by ensuring that inappropriate behaviour by pharmacy owners is effectively tackled”.
The GPhC revealed in 2021 that four professionals connected with online pharmacies had pending disqualification hearings.
