We want to expand the service offer of community pharmacies to enable them to offer prescription only treatments without patients having to see their GP. This will enable community pharmacies to make use of their natural advantage over online pharmacies of being physically present in the community and able to provide medicine quickly and directly rather than wait on delivery by post.
We are currently providing treatments for adults aged 18 and above. We will soon be expanding the service to provide treatments for common acute conditions for children.
Men’s health, women’s health, travel health, general health, skin health, sexual health and chronic health…we are constantly reviewing this and continue to expand on the conditions to cover a wider set of treatments.
We offer patients the option to purchase complimentary treatments during the sales process. An example would be to offer a nasal spray and eye drops to a hay fever patient who is purchasing an antihistamine medication such as fexofenadine.
The majority of our treatments are prescription only, we offer some medications at higher strengths that are prescription only.
All of our pharmacist prescribers are based in the UK, they are qualified in the UK and are regulated by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).
We do not currently offer a direct consultation service. We intend to offer an online doctor service in the near future. With the existing service, if a patient has made an order or is in the process of making an order, they can make a query to our clinical team in relation to the condition they are seeking treatment for. Our clinical team will respond by either telephone or through the website messaging system. Alternatively, if our clinical team feels the need to contact the patients to discuss their medical history or completed medical assessment further, they will contact them via telephone or the messaging system.
Repeat prescriptions are time limited - usually 6 months depending on the condition and treatment. Once the period has expired the patient is invited to complete a new medical consultation for us to be able to issue another prescription.
We cover both acute and chronic low risk conditions.
We strongly recommend that the pharmacy check that they have the particular medication requested in stock before advising the patient to choose this option. If this option is chosen then we will expedite the processing of the medical consultation and issue a prescription within 2 hours.
We only issue electronic private prescriptions only.
We are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and our pharmacists are regulated by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC).
Yes, we are covered as a company and each of our clinicians have their own additional indemnity cover.
The majority of treatments are within a price range of £25-£35 for the patient. The price varies depending on the individual medication cost. We charge approximately a third for providing the service and the remainder goes to the pharmacy to cover the cost of the medication and the majority share of the profit. This is considerably more profitable than dispensing NHS prescriptions for the pharmacies.
No, we collect the payment through the website, we only collect full payment from the patient once the treatment has been confirmed and prescription issued. We will disburse payment to our pharmacy partners on a monthly basis.
There is a considerable amount of IT work required to maintain our system for use by our pharmacy clients, we charge a monthly fee to cover the cost of maintaining this.
We will periodically review medication pricing according to wholesale prices and reset medication costs on our system to protect our pharmacy partners from medication price increases; the increase in price will go to our pharmacy partners to cover this increased cost. However, we will not adjust our pricings for small price increases as we have already factored this into our pricing policy to reduce the frequency of price changes. We are happy for our partner pharmacies to inform us of any wholesale price increases so we can react faster.
We do not allow the pharmacies to set individual treatment prices but we have a pricing tier system from which the pharmacy can choose in accordance with their patient socioeconomic status and business circumstances. We do however encourage our partner pharmacies to consider carefully what a reasonable cost is for patients in their community to pay for this service. We want to increase the sales volume and not necessarily put patients off by selecting a pricing tier that may not necessarily apply to a particular community.
We will issue our pharmacy partners with a full price list for use by pharmacy staff, our prices are also available on the website.
We aim to keep the total cost to the patient within the £25-35 price range, but this will vary as some medications are a lot more expensive. We have calculated that the vast majority (60-70%) of our treatment will fall within the £25-35 price range.
On a monthly basis in arrears.
Our prices are likely to be higher as it's always going to be difficult to compete with online providers. However, we do not see this service as competing on price alone, but rather we believe this is a unique service that utilises the existing community pharmacy settings, and provides a much faster and trusted service.
Your pharmacists do not have to do any additional work to undertake this service. This service from the community pharmacy point of view is no different to dispensing an NHS or private prescription. We do expect pharmacy staff to sign post potential patients to our service and treatment options as they already do for their patients when they provide advice and signpost them to either their GP or alternative NHS services.
We will provide guidance and training to pharmacy staff on how to use our pharmacy portal so they can manage and use all the functionalities of the pharmacy portal in order to process active orders. There is no clinical training required for this service.
We will stop offering the medication on our website and possibly look at alternative medications until the supply issue is resolved.
We expect pharmacy staff to signpost patients to our service and treatment options as part of their day to day work. This is no different from what the staff do currently in the sense that many patients are referred to their GP or alternative NHS service for certain conditions. There may be times when the pharmacy staff are required to support patients with completing the online medical assessment form.
Please get in touch and we will look to offer the treatment through our service. We are always happy to receive feedback and advice from our pharmacy partners.
Only the standard questions of asking for name, address and date of birth. This is no different to the existing practices of pharmacies when patients collect their medications. We verify the identity of the patients via our third party partner company as part of this service.
There may be some patients who may not necessarily be tech savvy and thus may require some additional support. Others may need more clarity from the medical assessment form, but we believe our website is extremely user friendly and is quite self explanatory, so minimal support will be required. Will we be provided with Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for this service? We will provide you with a full written SOP for this service as well as all the relevant training manuals for the delivery of this service. We expect our partner pharmacies to adhere to the SOP to ensure smooth running of this service. Should we inform the GP of any medications that are dispensed through this service? The pharmacy will not be required to proactively inform the GP upon dispensing a medication under this service. We will be encouraging the patients directly to give consent to us to share information with their GP where possible.
Please get in touch with our technical support team.
You should be able to request to reset your password by clicking on the ‘I have forgotten my password’.
You can make changes in the account details section of your account.
Please get in touch with our technical support team.
Through the portal messaging system.
Yes, during the onboarding process, our team will provide full training on how to use the pharmacy portal.
We advise pharmacies to print the private prescription, but then again, you may prefer to dispense it straight from the pharmacy portal. Different pharmacies have their own dispensing processes, and as such we will not want to interfere with that process, and so will leave it at the discretion of individual partner pharmacies. The GPhC protocol on dispensing private prescriptions will have to be followed.
Please contact our clinical team through your pharmacy portal account.
Please contact us through your pharmacy portal account or call us on the duty pharmacist line.
Please direct them to use the QR code provided on the leaflets and posters in the pharmacy, this will take them to our website and automatically nominate your pharmacy as their nominated pharmacy. Alternatively you can give them the web address.
If the pharmacist feels a clinical need to raise a query then that will be from their clinical judgement. We do however encourage the pharmacist to raise the initial query with our clinical team where applicable. But we do anticipate occasions where the pharmacist may need to contact the patient’s GP for certain clinical queries.
We would expect the pharmacist to exercise their clinical judgement and follow the normal protocols in such instances. This may include the need for patient’s to stop using the treatment and to contact us or their GP for further guidance. If the side effect is more serious in nature, then the patients should be signposted to their GP/NHS 111/999 where appropriate.
They should contact our clinical team and we can advise them further. Alternatively, the pharmacist can also play a clinical role here with ongoing support and advice.
We will provide leaflets, posters and marketing tools. We will also ask that you link our website to your website where possible.
We will provide leaflets, posters and multimedia video which can be uploaded on your TV monitors.
This can be undertaken by our IT team, all we need is your permission and the user details of your website.
We can help build a website for you at an additional cost. But it's important to bear in mind, you do not necessarily need a website to offer this service.
Yes, we are continuously looking at expanding our services. This includes adding children’s treatments; expanding the list of conditions on offer for adults; providing community blood test service and a private online doctor service. All of this will be in partnership with our partner pharmacies through the same system.
We will promote our service within the industry through advertising in the pharmacy journals, websites and pharmacy expo events. Once we have a sufficient customer base we will invest in online marketing and look for endorsements from the NHS and other private health organisations.
