The text below is copied from Regulate.
"Our governing council agreed the principles that will underpin how we will regulate registered pharmacies in future at their meeting on 6 December. We are now beginning work to implement operational changes to how we regulate and inspect pharmacies in line with these principles.
The changes, which follow a major consultation across the sector and with patients and the public, include:
- publishing inspection reports – and improvement action plans when relevant, on a new website - This will be designed so that the information is easy to search and analyse. Pharmacy owners will also be expected to display inspection outcomes in their pharmacies
- moving to unannounced inspections as a general rule in the future - This will make sure the outcomes of the inspection reflect whether the pharmacy is meeting the standards every day
- changes to the types of inspections - The new model will include three types of inspection: routine inspections, intelligence-led inspections and themed inspections
- changing inspection outcomes - There will be two possible outcomes for an inspection overall: ‘standards met’ or ‘standards not all met’. There will also be four possible findings at the principle level: ‘standards not all met’, ‘standards met’, ‘good practice’ and ‘excellent practice’
- requiring all standards to be met to receive an overall ‘standards met’ outcome - If any standard is found not to be met, this will result in a ‘standards not all met’ outcome overall
- sharing examples of notable practice - Examples of notable practice identified through inspections will be published in a ‘knowledge hub’ on the new website. This will help encourage continuous learning and improvement in pharmacy."
