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Private prescribing for higher risk conditions or medicines should never be based solely on the results of a questionnaire, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has said.
In a statement responding to a Department of Health and Social Care call for evidence on private (non-NHS) prescribing, published in August 2025, the Society said that it recommends a minimum clinical-assessment standard for prescription-only medicines (POMs) issued in private or online settings, “explicitly prohibiting questionnaire-only pathways for higher-risk conditions/classes”.
In its ‘Guidance for registered pharmacies providing pharmacy services at a distance, including on the internet‘, published in February 2025, the General Pharmaceutical Council said: “Some medicines are not suitable to be prescribed by a questionnaire model alone, and some medicines should not be supplied unless further safeguards have been put in place.”
The RPS response, published on 7 November 2025, added that information sharing between independent online services and the NHS was “inconsistent, which weakens medicines reconciliation and ongoing monitoring”.
“Private providers do not have access to the patient record and rely on the patient providing a complete and accurate history of medical conditions and medication,” it said.
“Often private providers contact NHS services asking them ‘to check if their patient is suitable’, which is neither safe nor appropriate.”
The Society has also recommended that private prescribing should incorporate “consent-based, bidirectional information-sharing with the core NHS record” or a similarly robust alternative.
In its response, the RPS said that private prescribing can be helpful for many patients, noting that some are content to pay privately to obtain, for example, weight-loss medicines, or to obtain a medicine more quickly than NHS access can offer.
It added that private prescribers are often also NHS clinicians, and “their practice will be guided by the same principles, and they are not suddenly going to practice in an unsafe manner”.
The Company Chemists’ Association’s (CCA) response to the DHSC call for evidence, shared with The Pharmaceutical Journal, said: “There are sufficient laws, regulations and standards in place to oversee private prescribing in the UK. However, regulators often lack the mechanisms to appropriately enforce these. This potentially exposes patients to unsafe care.
“Another concern lies in the poor data sharing that often exists between NHS services and private providers, as well as between private providers.”
“Prescribing without comprehensive information patient records may result in inappropriate care. This could include duplicated prescriptions, overlooked adverse drug interactions, or gaps in medical history. These issues can pose a risk to patient safety, and we expect this risk will increase as more people use private services,” its response added.
“To reduce the risk of patients being harmed by private providers, regulators must effectively enforce existing standards, regulation and legislation.”
The CCA also acknowledged that there are benefits to private prescribing, which it says include reduction in demand on NHS services and rapid access to medicines.
In a statement published alongside the RPS’s response, Claire Anderson, president of the RPS, said: “Patient safety must come first, no matter where or how care is delivered.”
“As private and online healthcare grows, we need stronger safeguards, clearer responsibilities and better data sharing to protect patients and ensure high standards across the board,” she added.
