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“.

A key pharmacy regulator inspection point is for the healthcare organisation to address the potential issue of when something goes wrong there is a clear hierarchical structure to the business so that issues can be reported, analysed, corrected and reviewed. For this reason, it is good organisational practice to have an organisational chart, sometimes known as an organisational planogram. A simple version can be seen below.

A more complicated (regulator preferable) version would look something like this:

Using our proprietary “Team Builder” technology, an organisation can build a hierarchical team and establish clear lines of responsibility for different aspects in the workplace.

“already included in the PCT’s pharmaceutical list; or adjacent to or in close proximity to premises that are already included in the PCT’s pharmaceutical list“

The NHS is becoming more and more concerned with pharmacists who already have licenses requesting a second within the same premises. For instance, if you are a pharmacist and have an upstairs empty space, an entrepreneur may think there is an opportunity to add another license above the primary license and then sell the second license. So in this regard, you need to state that this is not the case nor that this is your intention.

If you would like to book time with one of our consultants please do so using this link.

We can help you find a distance selling pharmacy (DSP) for sale, these often change hands for between £10,000 and £200,000 dependent on a few parameters, these include:

• NHS contract / license – some DSPs are only registered with the GPhC (the pharmacy regulator in the UK) and not the NHS, this means only private prescriptions can be dispensed thus limited revenues, thus reduced price.
• Location – all DSPs must be operated from a physical location. In our decade of experience, we have worked with DSPs location from restaurants to dedicated office space in central London. The price differential would depend on whether there is a freehold or lease. If there is a lease, how long does the lease last for?
• Overheads – the DSP you are looking to purchase may already be operating and thus have overheads. This could range from staff costs to website management. The more expensive DSP would have a large NHS list size, on average this is around 7,000 so a pharmacy doing 50,000 items would need to employ multiple staff members and have sufficient space.

If you would like us to help you find a distance selling pharmacy for sale or would like a no obligation book a time to speak to one of our advisors here.