Licensee resources

For new and existing licensed pharmacies, it is the licensee’s responsibility to review and ensure their pharmacy complies with ACP’s foundational requirements.

ACP encourages licensees to use the compliance checklist to assess their pharmacies. If deficiencies are identified, the licensee is responsible to take immediate action to address them.

If the licensee is temporarily away for vacation or a short-term leave that is more than 30 days, the licensee must assign a temporary pharmacist in charge (TPIC) to oversee the pharmacy in their absence. If the licensee is temporarily away for more than 60 days or if the licensee resigns or ceases to be responsible for the pharmacy, the licence terminates, and the pharmacy must close unless a new licensee is approved or the pharmacy is immediately put under the personal management, control, and supervision of an approved TPIC.

The following sections provide quick references to basic operational requirements and tools.

Required references

A pharmacy must have an adequate library, including all required references, to which a regulated member in the dispensary can have immediate access to the references.

Policies and procedures

A pharmacy must have policies and procedures that ensure that each regulated member practising in the pharmacy will comply with the laws that govern pharmacy operations, drug distribution, and the practice of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

For guidance, ACP offers a general policies and procedures manual template and a non-sterile compounding policies and procedures manual template that may be used to develop a pharmacy’s policies and procedures.

Inspection resources

• Pharmacy inspection readiness form
• Pharmacy inspection compliance checklist
• Digital evidence submission template
• Shared premises form

Time-delayed safe declarations

• Compounding and repackaging pharmacy
• Institution pharmacy
• Pharmacy with no narcotics

Compounding and repackaging pharmacies

Pharmacies that compound or repackage drugs to be dispensed through other community pharmacies must have

• a compounding and repackaging pharmacy licence, and
• a compounding and repackaging agreement (for community or institution pharmacies) in the form approved by Council with each community pharmacy to which they provide services.

Website

If a pharmacy has a public website, the website must prominently display

• a copy (scanned is acceptable) of the pharmacy licence;
• the pharmacy’s location, mailing address, email address, and telephone number;
• the licensee’s name, registration number, and business address;
• a statement that the licensee is required to provide, on the request of a patient, the name and registration number of any regulated member who provides a pharmacy service to the patient or who engages in the practice of pharmacy with respect to a patient;
• the proprietor’s name and business address;
• the name of the proprietor’s representative; and
• the patient concerns poster.

Signage

The following signs must be posted in the pharmacy:

• Pharmacy licence in a conspicuous public part of the pharmacy,
• Patient concerns poster in the prescription department,
• Hours of operation at all public entrances to the pharmacy, and
• Code of Ethics poster in the prescription department.

Optional posters

• Patient privacy poster.
• Returned medication card. This poster tells patients that pharmacies must not accept drugs or health products for reuse.