FMC Marketing Ltd

Updated 10 June 2019

Background

FMC Marketing Ltd was established in 2003 to provide an online consultation, treatment and prescribing service for a limited number of medical conditions to patients in the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia and Portugal. Its management offices are at 69 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HX. The provider carries out asynchronous (text based) consultations and the doctor contacts patients where necessary to clarify answers given.

A registered manager is in place. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the CQC to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and Associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The conditions treated are: weight loss, hair loss, contraception, anti-malaria, period delay, smoking cessation, allergy management, acne and erectile dysfunction. The service’s call centre is open between 10am and 3pm Monday to Friday. However, patients are able to complete and submit consultation forms to request treatment 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the provider’s websites. Requests for treatment received up to 3pm on a weekday are normally dealt with within a three-hour timescale. Other requests are dealt with the following working day. It is not an emergency service. Once the doctor approves a prescription it is sent to the designated pharmacy. The pharmacy dispenses the medicines and posts them to the patients nominated address.

How we inspected this service

This inspection was carried out a CQC Lead Inspector, GP specialist Advisor, CQC Pharmacist and a second CQC Inspector.

Before the inspection we gathered and reviewed information from the provider. During this inspection we spoke to the two directors of the service and the GP who undertakes consultations and prescribing. The other GPs role is to undertake consultation and prescribing audits.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?

• Is it effective?

• Is it caring?

• Is it responsive to people’s needs?

• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 10 June 2019

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We rated this service as Requires improvement overall. (Previous inspection 30 May 2018, when we found the provider was meeting the relevant standards)

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at FMC Marketing Ltd on 11 April 2019, as part of our inspection programme.

FMC Marketing Ltd has management offices at 69 Old Street, EC1V 9HX London. It is run by two directors who are based at the management offices, and two GPs who work remotely from the management offices. It operates as an online doctor service via the following four websites: www.deutsch.prima-med.com; www.firstmed.co.uk; www.pharma.myonlinedoctor.co.uk; and www.myonlinedoctor.co.uk.

At this inspection we found:

• Staff personnel files we looked at did not contain evidence of up to date mandatory training.
• Not all prescribing was within national guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients could access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There were no medical health questionnaires to identify age-related health issues amongst the service’s aging patient population
• There was a clear organisational structure and staff were aware of their roles and responsibilities.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Consider updating service websites to provide links to additional sources of information about health conditions.
• Encourage patients to re-complete a full health history questionnaire on a regular basis to ensure the service has full knowledge of any changes in patient’s health since a full medical history was last taken.
• Review and encourage all staff to undertake mandatory skills training on a regular basis.
• Consider changing the system for reviewing alerts coming into the service to ensure these are always seen and acted upon by a clinician.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care