Virtual GP provider prosecuted by CQC

Mental health service faces prosecution

A virtual GP service has pleaded guilty to carrying on a regulated activity without registering with the CQC.

Stockport-based Pharmacorp Ltd, which is also known as Medicine Direct, is due to be sentenced at Tameside Magistrates’ Court tomorrow following prosecution by the regulator.

The CQC said the company’s website was misleading and suggested its doctors were located in the UK when they were actually based in Romania. Moreover, it said the online patient questionnaire used by doctors exposed patients to a significant risk of harm and ‘carried the real risk of misdiagnosis’.

‘Without access to the patients’ GP notes, the doctor would have been unable to confirm that the information provided in the questionnaire by the patients was accurate,’ said the regulator.

The CQC requires digital providers which use doctor consultation services to be registered as a provider for the regulated activity of the treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Failure to register, amounts to a criminal offence under Section 10 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, which states that persons who carry on a regulated activity without being registered under this Chapter are guilty of an offence.