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Community pharmacies that are rated as satisfactory, good or excellent are to be given more time to comment on the factual accuracy of their GPhC inspection report.

The response time is being increased to five days, although pharmacies that are rated as poor will still have to respond within two days.

€Our decision to extend the timeframe reflects the importance of providing prompt responses but allows a longer period of time where there are no risks to patient safety,€ says chief executive Duncan Rudkin. €I know this will address an important concern that was raised to us by a number of pharmacy owners and superintendents.€

Other changes include:

• Streamlining the inspection process through a bigger focus on the context in which an individual pharmacy operates
• Revising the decision-making framework, so that inspection reports contain explicit evidence of where satisfactory pharmacies can improve
• Providing further case studies of 'good' pharmacies
• Setting out further principles of 'excellence' using contributions from practitioners and leaders

The GPhC says the standards most commonly not met relate to how risks in pharmacies are being identified and managed, as well as providing safe and clean pharmacy premises.

€We remain fully committed to listening so that we can refine our approach in light of the experiences from pharmacy.€