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The co-owner of an online pharmacy has received an official warning from the GPhC after he was found to have dispensed gender affirming hormones prescribed by overseas clinicians without carrying out adequate risk assessments.

The pharmacy owner was told that between September 2021 and December 2022 they had dispensed medicines against prescriptions issued by Gender GP without ensuring the latter’s prescribers were working within the UK regulatory framework.

Gender GP, a company that is registered in Singapore and provides services to transgender patients and individuals with gender dysphoria, is not regulated in the UK. 

The GPhC told the co-owner they had “failed to carry out comprehensive risk assessments and audits” with respect to Gender GP and another online prescribing service, UK Meds Direct, which also was not regulated in the UK. 

Concerns were raised that UK Meds prescribed medicines “predominantly on the basis of an online questionnaire” and did not usually seek to establish patients’ medical history by contacting their GP.

The company dispensed UK Meds prescriptions for weight loss drugs and medicines to treat conditions requiring ongoing monitoring, like asthma and diabetes, which the regulator described as “unsuitable to be prescribed on the basis of a questionnaire alone.”

“Without additional clinical checks and safeguards patients were put at risk of harm,” said the GPhC. 

The regulator added: “The registrant dispensed medicines for conditions which required monitoring, without ensuring that they were being adequately monitored.

“This was happening even though patients had already obtained numerous supplies of the same medicines from UK Meds.”

The owner found to have breached five of the regulator’s professional standards, including providing person-centred care, communicating effectively and exercising the use of professional judgment. 

They were warned of the potential serious risk to patients when high-risk medicines and drugs requiring monitoring are dispensed against prescriptions that are “issued remotely on the basis only of an online questionnaire and without the required clinical checks, monitoring in place and engagement of a patient’s GP”. 

They were told they must carry out adequate due diligence before working with any third-party services or organisations in the future. 

The warning, which was issued on July 17, will be on their registry entry for 12 months from that date.

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