NEW pharmacy owners are being urged to review their store's compliance with legislation and guidelines.
The Victorian Pharmacy Authority (VPA) noted "it is not uncommon for serious deficiencies to be identified during pharmacy inspections that follow a change in ownership", in a circular released this week.
The VPA recommended that new owners should pay attention to pharmacy security, privacy arrangements, the management of Schedule 8 poisons, appropriate storage and display of other scheduled medicines, maintenance of cold chain, compliance with premises and equipment requirements for complex compounding, maintenance of current editions of mandatory references, and dose administration aid packing records.
"If you become the licensee of a pharmacy you then become responsible for ensuring the pharmacy is carried on in accordance with legislation and good pharmacy practice," the Authority said.
"An inspection will be conducted following the change of ownership.
"If the inspection identifies areas of non-compliance you will be required to rectify the matters and serious non-compliance may result in a panel hearing."
The VPA added that based on statistics from recent inspections, inspectors are currently focusing on the adequacy of reference libraries, timely and accurate recording of transactions of S8 poisons, regular reconciliation of S8 medicine stocks and records, appropriate storage of S8 products, whether barcode scanning is undertaken routinely during dispensing, is the dispensary maintained as a private area dedicated to dispensing, and appropriate storage and display of S3 medicines.
The VPA highlighted the availability of its self-audit form as an aid to monitoring compliance - view it at pharmacy.vic.gov.au.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 26 Sep 19
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