Methodology
How We Verify Providers
Patient safety is not something we trade off against price. A provider appears in our comparison tables only if it is registered with the regulator that governs its activity, and we confirm that registration against the public register ourselves rather than taking a provider’s word for it.
Registration is a condition of being listed at all, not a badge we award to some entries and withhold from others. A provider that cannot be matched to a current entry on the appropriate register is not compared, not ranked, and not linked to.
The registrations we require
Which register applies depends on where a provider operates and what it does. A service that both prescribes and dispenses must satisfy a pharmacy registration and a clinical one, not either in isolation.
Pharmacies — Great Britain
GPhC registration
Any pharmacy operating in England, Scotland, or Wales must hold a current registration with the General Pharmaceutical Council. We match the trading name and registered premises against the GPhC register and record the registration number alongside the listing.
Pharmacies — Northern Ireland
PSNI registration
Pharmacies in Northern Ireland are regulated separately, by the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland. We check those premises against the PSNI register rather than assuming a Great Britain registration carries across.
Prescribers and clinics
CQC or national equivalent
The clinic behind a prescribing service must be registered with the Care Quality Commission in England, or with the equivalent national regulator: Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, or the RQIA in Northern Ireland.
Ongoing monitoring
Registration is re-checked, not checked once
A registration confirmed on the day a provider is listed tells you about that day and nothing after it. We re-check every listed provider against its register on a fixed cycle, and record the date of the most recent check alongside the listing.
If a registration is suspended, revoked, or allowed to lapse, the provider comes out of comparison as soon as we identify the change. Its rows are removed from the tables and its links are disabled, rather than being flagged and left in place for readers to interpret.
Where a register entry has changed in a way we cannot immediately interpret, we suspend the listing while we confirm, on the principle that the cautious outcome for a reader is not to be sent to that provider. Removal is not a penalty: a provider returns to the tables once we can match it to a current registration again.