How long does it take to start a distance selling pharmacy?

The quickest it can be done is around 3 months. However, this fully depends on the bottlenecks of the process.

The first thing that needs to be decided is whether you want to operate an NHS pharmacy or a Private Pharmacy. If you choose to do both this could take more time. The simplest form of a pharmacy in the UK is a Private Pharmacy however, this is limited in that it cannot receive or dispense NHS commissioned prescriptions. A private pharmacy can only receive private prescriptions from doctors working within the private sector.

The quickest way to start a pharmacy in the UK

1. Apply to the UK pharmacy regulator (the GPhC) via this link.
2. In order to be accepted the application must include the details of a selected director representative and a superintendent pharmacist. If you need to find the latter please contact us.
3. Within the application there are specific questions which need to be answered concerning the clinical governance of the business, questions to expect include: whether you will be selling P medicines, whether you will be preparing unlicensed medicines or whether you will be prescribing online via the pharmacy website.
4. Once these questions are sufficiently answered, the application is sent off to the GPhC to make a determination, this is the main bottleneck of this process and often takes 2-4 weeks to reply.
5. A typical initial response from the GPhC often includes a request for Pharmacy Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for instance for Pharmacy Cyber Security or an online prescribing risk matrix.
6. Once these have been submitted, the GPhC will schedule an inspection which may be physical or online.
7. Once the inspection has successfully been passed a Pharmacy Notice of Entry is granted (see below) which highlights the fact that “Under the Pharmacy Order 2010 your pharmacy’s entry in the register is valid for one calendar year from the date of entry“.