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The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has ruled a pharmacist who oversaw the prescribing of over 85,000 prescriptions, including more than 70,000 high-risk medicines, without carrying out proper clinical checks can continue practising once his suspension expires this month.

In a hearing last week, the regulator concluded Tariq Boodhoo’s fitness-to-practise was not impaired having decided his “reflective work and completed training adequately met the regulatory and public interest concerns”.

He was originally suspended for four months in June this year after a GPhC committee hearing found his fitness to practise was impaired on public interest grounds but “not because of ongoing risk of repetition”. His suspension expires on November 23.

Between February 1, 2018 and July 27, 2018, Boodhoo was the superintendent pharmacist at the online pharmacy UK Meds Direct Ltd and the responsible pharmacist (RP) there between October 2, 2017 and July 27, 2018.  

During his time as superintendent pharmacist (SP), he oversaw the prescribing of around 70,391 high-risk medicines without carrying out proper clinical assessments, including 21,336 prescriptions for z-drugs, 33,480 for opioids, 3,632 for anticonvulsants (controlled), 8,723 for Modafinil, 1,012 for Amitriptyline, 1,359 for Propranolol, 566 for weight-loss medicines, 580 for Metformin and/or 1,988 for Ventolin.

The GPhC found he did not get adequate information about patients’ health before prescribing medication, failed to check their GP medical records and request a face-to-face consultation with patients. The committee also found Boodhoo “failed to adequately consider the possibility of medication dependence and misuse”, refer patients back to their GP for assessment and “put adequate safety-netting in place”.

The committee said he operated a “transactional” prescribing model that saw prescribers process patient requests through a patient questionnaire instead of following UK prescribing guidance. The committee found he failed to comply with General Medical Council and Royal Pharmaceutical Society prescribing guidance.

However, the latest hearing concluded Boodhoo had “undertaken considerable research” on the GPhC’s guidance on providing pharmacy services at a distance, shown “a strong appreciation of how the public could be put at risk” by failing to challenge “unsafe or unprofessional practice” and “satisfactorily identified the differences” between the roles of RP and SP.

The hearing also said Boodhoo gave “a strong and clear example” of how he had challenged a consultant’s prescribing decision in the patient’s interest. It ruled his fitness to practise was no longer impaired.