How Does Remote Prescribing Work?

As an online pharmacy, we use a remote prescription model that is similar to visiting your GP, but varies in some key ways.

After several years of pandemic healthcare, most people will be familiar with the idea of remote consultations; you call your doctor and describe your symptoms over the phone. For many minor issues, they will be willing to prescribe treatment over the phone. Some surgeries even use online consultations to give advice, or to gather information to help triage patients. In some cases, they may ask you to come into the surgery for a more in-depth conversation or to check physical symptoms.

We are a private medical organisation; this means that we do not have access to your NHS medical records. As such, the prescribing we can do may be limited, and we need to rely on the information you give us to make a decision as to whether a given medication is suitable for you. For this reason, it is very important that you are transparent with us and provide us with as much relevant medical information as you can. 

As an online provider, the questionnaires we use before supply give us an insight into your medical health and history. We can use these to determine whether it is safe to prescribe from these questions, or whether you will need to speak to your own GP.

We are comfortable treating certain conditions that our clinical team have rigorously assessed to be safe for remote online prescribing. We are also comfortable treating patients with lower risk medicines for these conditions, although every patient is assessed on an individual basis.

Patient safety is a key component of our brand; as such, there may be some cases where we choose not to prescribe due to being uncomfortable with the level of risk involved.

This can be for a number of reasons;

• We can only prescribe a medication if it is safe to do so. There are many factors that can make it unsafe such as your existing medical conditions, your current medicines, and your previous medical history.
• The answers given are not enough to provide a full risk assessment of your medical history. If we cannot build an appropriate risk profile for your treatment, it is not safe to treat you remotely.
• The answers you give may point towards a problem that cannot be diagnosed online and your symptoms should be physically assessed. Severe symptoms and complex cases are more appropriately assessed in-person.
• The information you shared with us may be unsafe if not shared with other healthcare providers. For instance, some medications can have dangerous interactions with other medications or cause side effects that need to be investigated. Other healthcare providers should be aware of the treatment you take so they can be aware of these risks.  For some treatments we will not make a supply unless you give us your GP details and we can inform them.  For others, we can notify your GP for you if we have your consent to do so.  

Where we are unable to prescribe, we aim to provide you with the information to make an informed choice about your healthcare. Our prescribers will always signpost you to the most appropriate service so that you know where to go for your medical issue.

We are under no obligation to issue a prescription as a result of any consultation, and once we have provided the consultation, our Service is fully performed even if we decide that treatment or issuing a prescription is not appropriate.

The information and advice provided when you use the Services is based on the information (including your identification) you have supplied to us. You must ensure this information is correct and complete and failure to do so (whether intentionally or not) will affect the information and advice and treatment we give to you and, as such, may have consequences for which we are not responsible.