Prime Pharmacy, a Venlo -based pharmacy that is treated from ‘internet doctors’ recipes, must immediately stop, decided the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate (IGJ). There would be ‘acute risks’ for ‘patient safety’, the inspection has received at least one concrete report about the company. The pharmacy was informed of the order last Friday.
The pharmacy, located on an industrial estate in Venlo, provides medicines that customers can order through all kinds of web shops. One of those web shops is Dokteronline.com, which has been selling all kinds of medicines for years that a doctor’s recipe is needed. Those recipes are indeed issued, but by doctors abroad, who have not had contact with the patient and therefore do not know anything about his or her medical condition or history.
Prime Pharmacy takes care of those recipes without sound control and sends the medicines to the customer. That is, the inspection, in many respects in violation of the law and dangerous. According to Het Financieele Dagblad Would it be “among other things” about obesity medication.
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But a pharmacist has a duty of care according to Dutch law, just like a doctor. And is therefore obliged, among other things, to determine the identity of a patient before he handles a recipe. The pharmacist must also estimate whether spending that medicine on that patient is safe. The inspection states that Prime Pharmacy sends the medicines to patients without sound control. Nowhere in this process can the patient request a consultation with the pharmacist and there is no control over any complications.
Prime Pharmacy must therefore stop the issue of medicines to patients who live in the Netherlands for at least seven days. The Inspectorate then assesses again whether Dutch laws and regulations are met. If not, a penalty can follow.
DokterOnline, one of the web stores where Prime Pharmacy does business, has been an eye for the inspection for some time
‘No comments’
Prime Pharmacy Mág Online Publishing Drugs for which a doctor’s recipe is needed. The company is registered as an online pharmacy in the register of the central government, in the name of a Dutch pharmacist with the right papers. What is not allowed is the collaboration with web shops that offer such medicines without the thorough intervention of a Dutch doctor.
However, this pharmacist does this to your heart’s content, can be seen in the register of online pharmacies from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. His company does business with, among others, German and Romanian web shops. The pharmacist in question founded the pharmacy in 2020, and is involved in more companies that provide online medicines. He has NRC Let us know by telephone that he wants to “not comment” on the order of the inspection. “Everything can be found online, take advantage of it.”
DokterOnline, one of the web stores where Prime Pharmacy does business, has been an eye for the inspection for some time. It is known that it has Dutch customers. But, a spokesperson for the inspection told NRC, web shops are difficult to tackle. “We are regularly after that, but then they suddenly change the site, and they often operate from abroad.”
This time the inspection did intervene, in its own words because it is about a far -reaching pharmacy that is officially registered in the Netherlands, and because a “concrete report” had arrived on this pharmacy. Earlier, in 2010, another far -reaching pharmacy from DokterOnline has been expelled because he issued around 25,000 packages for the website on the basis of a recipe from a foreign doctor that is not to be verified.
On one site
It is striking that on the same business park in Venlo, even in the same street, there are at least three other online pharmacies that seem to work through this construction, but especially for foreign customers. When asked whether it is permitted for Dutch pharmacies to provide medicines to foreign customers in this way, the IGJ says: a “pharmacy cannot always adhere to the laws and regulations of the Netherlands and the other country”. It is, however, intended that these pharmacies adhere to ‘the Dutch legal standard’ good care ‘”. In the case of these three pharmacies in the municipality of Venlo, which in particular deliver to Germany, the IGJ has informed his “German colleagues about our findings.”
From earlier research by NRC It appears that more Dutch pharmacies work through a similar construction such as Prime Pharmacy. For example, the webshop Treated works together with a pharmacy that is located in Maarssen. After reporting from NRC in February, the responsible pharmacist laid down his duties there, commissioned by the pharmacy association where he also worked. But within a day another pharmacist won the company.
When asked, the IGJ indicates that it has received more ‘signals’ about these types of constructions, but cannot comment on current affairs. The spokesperson, however, says that at Prime Pharmacy it was “so wrong” that “in connection with the risk of safety” could not wait to stop delivering. In addition, a role played that “sir showed no insight”.
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