Archived: FMC Marketing Limited - Grand Union Studios

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at FMC Marketing Ltd on 19 April 2017.

FMC Marketing Ltd provides an online clinic, consultation, treatment and prescribing service for a limited number of medical conditions to patients from England, Italy, France and Germany.

We found this service was not providing safe, effective, caring or well-led care but were providing responsive services in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Our key findings were:

• The service had systems to keep service users safeguarded from abuse.
• Appropriate systems were in place to record and learn from significant and clinical events.
• There were some systems in place to protect patients personal information and the provider was registered with the Information Commissioners Office.
• The service encouraged and acted on feedback from patients.
• The service managed patients’ applications for medicines in a timely way.
• Information about services and how to complain was available on the providers websites.
• The provider was aware of the requirements of the duty of candour.

We identified regulations that were not being met and the provider must:

• Add the name, GMC number and brief description of their doctor to their websites to enable potential patients to make an informed choice.
• Ensure medical questionnaires are updated to capture all potentially relevant information and reflect current best practice guidance.
• Ensure there is a formal process or policy in place governing the identification or classification of risk when assessing medical questionnaires.
• Introduce a programme of clinical audit and quality improvement activity.
• Ensure doctors employed by the service are appropriately appraised for their work with FMC Marketing Ltd.
• Ensure that there is an effective process in place for identifying and verifying patient identification.
• Ensure that doctors employed by the service have the skills, training, experience and medical indemnity required to enable them to carry out the role of online doctor.
• Continue with the introduction of a process to review and monitor prescribing and consultations.
• Ensure there is more clinical involvement and oversight in the day to day operation and running of the service.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Update the medical emergency protocol to ensure a patients location as well as home address are known prior to consultation.
• Record a patients own GP details before consultation and treatment is approved.
• Take steps to ensure patient confidentiality is comprehensively protected when patient data is being accessed by the doctor and in the event that the company should cease trading.

You can see full details of the regulations not being met at the end of this report.

Summary of any enforcement action

We are now taking further action in relation to this provider and will report on this when it is completed.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice