Superintendent struck off and two pharmacists suspended

A superintendent pharmacist has been struck off and two pharmacists have been suspended after dispensing high-risk medications online without “adequately safeguarding” patients.

Amarjit Singh Bassi, registration number 2025424, was removed from the register after the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) found he managed and oversaw a dispensing model that routinely dispensed high-risk medicines where the prescriber had not obtained “adequate information” about patients’ health and had “relied principally” on online questionnaires.

Mukesh Aggarwal, registration number 2039486, dispensed or oversaw the “dispensing of approximately 28,070 prescriptions which included high-risk medicines” between “around 30 December 2017 and 3 October 2018”.

At hearings held from April 20 to May 13, the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) fitness-to-practise (FtP) committee heard that this was done “without carrying out due diligence” or “assuring… that prescribers were appropriately safeguarding patients”, and while acting as the responsible pharmacist.

He “oversaw the prescription dispensing model” that let these high-risk medicines be “repeatedly dispensed to patients who had already made repeated orders for the same medicine or same type of medicine”.

Sonia Aggarwal, registration number 2044050, was also acting as a superintendent pharmacist at Homecare pharmacy working through UKMeds. She was found to have had “oversight of a prescription dispensing model” that functioned without “carrying out … [or] assuring… that adequate due diligence had been carried out by others”.

For all three registrants, the regulator considered that medications were “routinely prescribed” without completing safety checks such as obtaining “adequate information in relation to patients’ health”, accessing “patients’ GP medical records” and primarily relying on patient’s answers from an “online questionnaire”.

“Unblemished careers”

The committee noted that all the registrants “were of good character” and had previously “long and unblemished careers”.

There were “full admissions” made by Mr and Mrs Aggarawal, with Mr Bassi making “generic admissions” without any “formal admissions to the particulars of the charge”.

All three had shown “genuine remorse and regret”.

The GPhC acknowledged that “the relevant guidance for online dispensing and prescribing changed between 2018 and 2025 on a number of occasions”, but that “non-compliance” was shown “throughout the period in question”.

The regulator decided that the “duration of the misconduct” was “significant” for all three registrants, but it was “shorter” for Mrs Aggarwal and Mr Bassi.

“Unacceptable level of risk”

The “level of harm and impact upon others” was also described as being “significant”, placing an “unacceptable level of risk” that “was especially acute for vulnerable patients”.

There was “evidence of significant risk of harm but also of actual harm occasioned to patients”, with all the misconduct involving “controlled drugs and high-risk medications”.

Mr Aggarwal was the responsible pharmacist and “legal owner of Homercare”, and was a director of JIT and 8PM Chemist Ltd.

It was his “responsibility to ensure that the systems were applied safely at the point of him making dispensing decisions”, but as a director his “obligations were broader” and should have included “ensuring the quality of the systems, processes and clinical governance of Homecare alongside the superintendent”.

He qualified in 1991 and became the “responsible pharmacist at Homecare” in 2008, with the regulator noting he was “remunerated for contracted hours with 8PM Chemists Ltd” rather than “prescriptions fulfilled”.

Mrs Aggarwal is “the sister-in-law of Mr Aggarwal” and was the superintendent pharmacist from “30 December 2017 until 2 August 2018” at Homecare.

The council heard she was “responsible for the overall management of Homecare so far as it was related to the sale and supply of medicines” and therefore “leadership responsibility to ensure the premises, systems and processes were safe”.

She left Homecare “having obtained a Pharmacist Independent Prescriber (PIP) qualification”, with Mr Bassi replacing her “as the superintendent pharmacist on 3 August 2018”.

He qualified in 1980 and “worked at 8PM Chemists Ltd for over 25 years as an employee”.

All three registrants were described by the GPhC as “experienced and competent” pharmacists.

UKMeds, incorporated in 2026, “operated 7 days a week” and dispensed 300 prescriptions a day in February 2018, which increased to 750 in May 2019.

The “majority” of these prescriptions were for “opiates, z-drugs, erectile dysfunction treatments and Modafinil”.

Patients could order prescriptions by using the websites then by self-selecting the “desired medications” and filling in an online questionnaire, with the questionnaire afterwards being “considered by a prescriber”.

The registrants also worked for MyUKDoctor, owned by Index Medical Services Limited, where patients would “self-select their desired medication” and then “fill in an online questionnaire”.

If patients selected answers which would “render them unsuitable for the medication, they would be informed by way of a pop-up box” and could then “could simply change their answer with no evidence that the prescriber, or registrants, would know that this had been done”.

The customers were “asked for consent to contact their GP”, but if they did not consent “patients were informed that orders would normally be processed on the same day”.

The website had a system in place to “prevent patients from ordering more medication prior to a previous order’s expiry”, but “there was no clear cap of total orders”.

Electronic

Homecare was an “internet or distance selling pharmacy” founded on April 1 2009.

It worked primarily through “the dispensing of private prescriptions” which were “predominantly received from UK Meds, and secondly from MyUKDoctor”.

UK Meds would send electronic prescriptions to Homecare and Mr Aggarwal was the responsible pharmacist “who dealt with dispensing the prescriptions”, and Mr Bassi was “occasionally” covering.

The MyUKDoctor prescriptions were also “almost entirely opiates and z-drugs”, with Homecare being observed “dispensing approximately 200 prescriptions observed over a two day snapshot”.

An inspection of Homecare was completed on October 16 2019, with the regulator identifying “deficiencies in the systems and processes”.

“Failures of due diligence”

They were “subjected to conditions not to supply controlled drugs of schedule 1-5, alongside amitriptyline and modafinil” on October 18 following “the registrants serious failures of due diligence, record keeping and risk management” that were “all demonstrated with regard to the dispensing of high-risk medication, much of which carried serious risks of abuse and, or misuse”.

All three registrants “engaged” in the investigation, but Mr Bassi “chose not to attend the hearing”.

The committee acknowledged that the misconduct was “between 6 and 7 years ago” with “no repetition or any other conduct issues of concern for any of the registrants”.

It also saw that there had been “significant steps towards remediation”, and Mr Aggarwal and Mrs Aggarwal had shown “reflective evidence”.

The representative for Mr Aggarawal raised that “there was no financial motive for the misconduct for either Mr Aggarwal or Mrs Aggarwal” with the regulator noting that this also applied to Mr Bassi.

“Extensive testimonials”

Mr Aggarwal and Mrs Aggarwal both provided “extensive testimonials”, with Mr Aggarwal providing 26 from people who had “known him for many years” and included “both personal and professional character references”.

Mrs Aggarwal submitted 17 character references and “collectively these testimonials spoke of her compassion and kindness and thorough commitment to the profession of pharmacy”.

The GPhC’s representative raised that Mr Bassi’s “integrity had been called into question as a result of his misconduct”, and he also had “failed to uphold the duties required in his statutory role as superintendent pharmacist”.

Mrs Aggarwal had similarly “failed to uphold the requirements of her role as superintendent pharmacist” and “in part, [was] responsible for the inadequacy of the systems that should have prevented the unacceptable risk to patient safety”.

The committee found that her misconduct was partly due to a “blurring of lines between the roles of business owner and manager and the statutory roles” in a pharmacy.

Mr Aggarwal was found to have a “lesser statutory role as responsible pharmacist” and in his role must have “had day to day awareness of the changes once online dispensing had commenced”.

The job would have “included observing high risk medication being dispensed in significant quantities within an unorthodox prescribing model”.

All the registrants were found to be impaired on “public interest” and “public protection grounds”.

The committee said that as the business “diverged from the orthodox model” that they were accustomed to, “they found themselves in a situation where they had overreached their own abilities”.

“The requisite robust scrutiny was absent and the registrants placed their patients in an extremely dangerous situation,” it added.

But it found that the “absence of any financial motive and no issues regarding the integrity of Mr Aggarwal and Mrs Aggarwal satisfied the committee that the more serious outcome of removal could be avoided” in their case.

“Serious and unacceptable”

Their misconduct was described as “so serious and unacceptable that public confidence in the profession could only be upheld” with a suspension, which was decided to be for 12 months.

This decision “fell just short of removal”, but the committee decided that “public interest includes the retention of otherwise competent pharmacists serving their community” and that their testimonials found they were both viewed with “high regard”.

The committee was concerned by Mr Bassi’s admission that “he took the role of superintendent pharmacist in name only and that he performed few, if any, of the duties expected” of this role.

It noted that it was a “tragedy” for Mr Bassi to “end a long unblemished career” in this way, but that it had “no option other than to remove Mr Bassi from the GPhC register”.

Read the determination in full here.