Of everything covered on this site, this is the practice that regulators have addressed most directly and that patients are least likely to know about. It is also the easiest to check, because it resolves into one question with a date in the answer.
What remote prescribing means here
Remote prescribing describes prescribing without seeing the patient. In many areas of medicine it is entirely appropriate, and telemedicine has an established and useful place.
Injectable cosmetic medicines are treated differently, and the reasoning is specific rather than general suspicion of technology. The assessment is not merely a check for contraindications. It involves examining the area to be treated, assessing muscle activity and facial anatomy, discussing expectations and their realism, considering whether the treatment is appropriate at all, and forming a view on whether the person is under pressure or has expectations that no treatment can meet. None of this can be done from a form.
The General Medical Council's guidance for doctors offering cosmetic interventions addresses prescribing injectable cosmetic medicines and is clear that these should not be prescribed remotely. Other regulators have taken comparable positions for their own registrants. You can read the guidance yourself, and you should, because it becomes the yardstick if you ever complain.
- Open
- The clinic, in writing, then the prescriber's professional register
Ask by email, then check at gmc-uk.org or nmc.org.uk - Type in
- Ask: who will prescribe, what is their registration number, and on what date and in what format will they assess me. Then search that name and number on the relevant register.
- A good result looks like
- A named prescriber with a current registration and a prescribing annotation where required, and an appointment date for an in person assessment before the treatment appointment.
- An ambiguous result looks like
- An answer naming a prescriber but describing the assessment as a review of your medical form. An assessment offered only by video. A prescriber named but no assessment date given. A refusal to name anyone.
- What it does not prove
- That the assessment will be adequate, or that the prescriber will decline if treatment is inappropriate. It proves only that an assessment is scheduled, which is the necessary first condition rather than the whole of it.
- Note
- Keep the reply. If you later complain, that message is the evidence of how the arrangement was described to you.
What it looks like in practice
The pattern patients describe is consistent. You book with an injector. You complete a medical history form, sometimes online. A prescriber you never meet reviews the form, perhaps that morning, perhaps in batches. The medicine is prescribed. You are injected.
At no point in that sequence did the prescriber assess you. The form was completed by you, or by the injector on your behalf, and reviewed by someone who has never seen your face.
Two variations are worth naming. A video consultation with the prescriber is closer than a form and is still not an in person assessment. And a prescriber who assessed you a year ago for a different area, and prescribes now without seeing you again, has not assessed you for this treatment.
The single question, and the answers you may get
Ask this in writing, before booking.
Please confirm who will prescribe, their registration number, and the date and format of their assessment of me.
Four kinds of reply, and what each tells you.
A name, a number and an appointment date. This is the answer you want. Check the registration, note the date, keep the message.
A name and number, and an assessment by video. Better than a form, still not in person. You now know exactly what you are agreeing to, and you can decide with that knowledge. Ask whether an in person assessment is available.
Our prescriber reviews your medical form. That is a description of prescribing without assessment. You can decline, and you can raise it with the prescriber's regulator if you wish.
Evasion, or a refusal to name anyone. A clinic administering a prescription only medicine knows who prescribed it. If it will not tell you, that itself is your answer.
| Reply you receive | What it describes | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Named prescriber, registration number, in person appointment date | An assessment | Check the registration, keep the message |
| Named prescriber, video assessment | A remote assessment | Ask whether an in person option exists, then decide |
| Our prescriber reviews your medical form | Prescribing without assessment | Decline, and consider raising it with the regulator |
| The doctor is not involved on the day | An answer to a different question | Repeat the question about assessment |
| No prescriber named | An unanswered question about a medicine | Do not proceed until it is answered |
| It is a filler, so there is no prescriber | A correct answer, if true | Switch to the device questions instead |
A framework written by this publication to organise the procedure. It is not a measurement, a guideline or a regulator's classification.
Why it matters clinically, not just procedurally
It is tempting to treat this as paperwork. It is not.
The assessment is where contraindications are identified, where interactions with other medicines are considered, where conditions that make treatment inadvisable come to light, and where a clinician can notice that a person's expectations are not achievable. It is also where a clinician can decline to treat, which is a professional obligation that only exists if somebody with the training to exercise it has actually looked at you.
A prescriber reviewing a form cannot examine anything, cannot observe how you move your face, and cannot notice what you are not saying. The regulatory position exists because of what the assessment is for.
Raising it, if you decide to
If you have been treated under an arrangement of this kind and you wish to raise it, the route is the prescriber's professional regulator, because the concern is about that individual's practice. Complaints about individual registrants go to the GMC, NMC, GDC, GPhC or HCPC as appropriate.
What makes such a complaint work is documentation. The written exchange in which the arrangement was described to you, the name of the prescriber, the date, the product used and your records. This is exactly the file described throughout this site, and it is why we keep saying to ask in writing. The complaint routes are mapped in who you complain to for each type of provider.
A fair word about clinics that do this properly
Plenty of providers run this correctly, and it costs them money to do so. An in person prescriber assessment takes prescriber time, which has to be paid for, and it is one reason why a low price sometimes reflects a structural decision rather than efficiency.
When a clinic tells you the prescriber will see you first, at a specific appointment, and names them without hesitation, they have chosen the more expensive model. That is worth recognising when you compare quotations, and it is one of the few places where price genuinely tells you something about what you are buying. The wider point about comparing quotations is in what a quotation should state.