Archived: MSF Medical Services Limited

Updated 27 November 2017

MSF Medical Services provides prescribing services to two online pharmacies (Assured Pharmacy and Men’s Pharmacy. The service is run by a GP (who is the registered manager) who provides the prescribing service along with two additional GPs who are contracted by MSF and work remotely. GPs from MSF have access to the online systems for both of the online pharmacies they prescribe from, and can view patient records when considering prescription requests.

A registered manager is in place. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Why we carried out this inspection

We undertook a comprehensive inspection of MSF Medical Services on 8 May 2017 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. Breaches of Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 were found. The full comprehensive report following the inspection on 8 May 2017 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for MSF Medical Services on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was carried out to review in detail the actions taken by the service to improve the quality of care and to confirm that the practice was now meeting legal requirements.

Updated 27 November 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We undertook an announced comprehensive inspection of MSF Medical Services on 8 May 2017 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. Breaches of Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 were found. The full comprehensive report following the inspection on 8 May 2017 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for MSF Medical Services on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was a follow up desk based focused inspection of MSF Medical Services carried out on 10 October 2017 to confirm that the service had implemented their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements.

The service is now providing safe, effective and well led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Our key findings were:

• Following the previous inspection, the service had introduced quality assurance processes to ensure that medicines were prescribed in line with national guidance and internal policy.

• The service had reviewed their system for the storage of patient safety and medicine alerts and made changes to ensure that they maintained a clear audit trail.

• The service had re-assessed the risks associated with the medicines they had available to prescribe, and had made changes to mitigate the risks identified to ensure that they were prescribing safely.
• The service had put processes in place to flag when staff training and registrations were due for renewal.
• The service had introduced a programme of team meetings which were attended by all GPs.
• The service had revised the contract of employment for all of their GPs to include the requirement that GPs should provide evidence that they have discussed their role in online prescribing with their appraiser as part of their NHS appraisal.
• The provider had considered the risks associated with patients being able to revise the answers given in the prescribing questionnaire, and as a result they had amended their system to alert GPs where this had happened.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice