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The former superintendent pharmacist of an online pharmacy implicated in numerous fitness to practise proceedings has been struck off the register over his failure to ensure the safety of its prescribing and dispensing services.

A remote FtP hearing that began on June 29 and concluded on July 31 found that Shyam Morjaria supervised the dispensing of around 43,000 high-risk medicines as responsible pharmacist and the prescribing of around 378,885 high-risk medicines as superintendent pharmacist.

Mr Morjaria joined UK Meds in September 2018 as a responsible pharmacist and was appointed superintendent pharmacist the following month.

He remained in that position until September 6, 2021 – the day before the pharmacy voluntarily removed itself from the register after failing successive GPhC inspections and having several conditions orders imposed. From May 2020, he was also a director of the company.

Prescriptions were issued primarily on the basis of an online questionnaire that could be “easily manipulated,” the FtP committee found, with a lack of adequate checks being carried out and “little, if any” communication with patients’ GPs or refer onwards to other relevant healthcare professionals.

Mr Morjaria also failed to ensure that prescribers attempted to access patients’ medical records to gain a full picture of their medical history or “adequately consider the possibility of medication dependence or misuse”.

In some instances, patients who were addicted to medicines such as opiates were able to obtain them, as were some patients who had a history of poor mental health and were at risk of abusing them.

The FtP committee also identified cases where patients who were “too young” to visit the UK Meds website were “easily” able to have prescriptions issued.

“It is alleged there was informed consent from patients in only 8,136 occasions across almost half a million occasions of high-risk medication being prescribed and that the prescribing model operated by UK Meds at this time was unsafe,” said the GPhC.

An analysis identified 2,663 instances of a patient being prescribed the same high risk medicine more than 10 times, and that over a 12-month period 97,588 transactions occurred in which requests for prescriptions for high risk medicines were approved “in less than one minute”.

“The public came to harm,” as a result of Mr Marjoria’s oversight failures, found the FtP committee as it considered evidence relating to several patients who overdosed on medicines they accessed from UK Meds, some with “tragic consequences”.

Mr Morjaria was neither present nor represented at the hearing, choosing instead to provide a written statement expressing his regret that some patients came to harm as a result of the services provided by UK Meds during his time there. He said he has since moved on from pharmacy practice, telling the committee that “this chapter of my life has come to an end”.

The FtP committee found that Mr Morjaria had failed to use the “wealth of data” available to him to identify worrying trends and that as an experienced superintendent pharmacist he “ought to have recognised the serious and systemic concerns that were developing within the service”.

It found that in his statement Mr Marjoria “appears to distance himself from board decisions and to minimise the extent of his influence within the organisation,”which failed to persuade the committee.

It concluded that the “only outcome” that would protect the public and uphold the reputation of the profession was to strike Mr Morjaria’s name from the register.

Previous UK Meds FtP rulings: Ex-online pharmacist suspended for role in issuing high-risk prescriptions

Pharmacist who oversaw prescribing of 85,000 drugs without safeguards can continue practising

‘Experienced’ pharmacist struck off and two suspended over unsafe online dispensing

‘Dishonest’ online pharmacist who issued prescriptions in under a minute struck off