Mystery shopping exercise of access to emergency hormonal contraception in Hackney
Download (PDF 981.94 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Hackney worked with Public Health Hackney to understand how people could access emergency contraception via local pharmacies. Between May 2022 and September 2022, a team from Healthwatch Hackney, including volunteers, ran a ‘mystery shopping’ activity to gain an overall snapshot of the access to Emergency Hormonal Contraception in Hackney by phoning and visiting the local pharmacies. They phoned 37 out of 38 pharmacies that provide emergency hormonal contraception and visited two pharmacies in each neighbourhood – one where they provided access to emergency contraception and one where they didn’t.
23 pharmacies offered the service for free. Of these, two pharmacies were unable to offer the free service on the day due to the locum pharmacist not being trained to deliver the service. One pharmacy had run out of stock, but the mystery shopper was signposted to another pharmacy. Two pharmacists offered the mystery shopper to either pay for the service or have it for free under the NHS. Three pharmacists gave conflicting information to both mystery shoppers about the charge of the service, so more than one call was needed to be made to clarify.
Seven pharmacists asked the mystery shoppers if they lived in Hackney. Three pharmacists asked if the mystery shopper is registered with a Hackney GP. Six pharmacists did not ask any questions. Three pharmacists asked the mystery shopper when they had had unprotected sex.
Fifteen out of thirty eight pharmacies said they charged for the service.
Almost all the 16 visited pharmacies confirmed the findings from the telephone mystery shopping. Although all the pharmacies were visited after they signed up to provide free EHC according to Public Health Hackney, only 7 out of the 16 visited pharmacies said they were offering free Emergency Hormonal Contraception. Nine were only offering the over-the-counter pill. One pharmacy offered free service over the phone, however, requested payment for the same service during the physical visit.
The report also contains the mystery shoppers’ perceptions of the visits, including staff attitude, information about emergency contraception and whether they were satisfied with the outcome.
In 14 out of 16 instances, the mystery shoppers were asked questions to identify the appropriate pill.
The report contains a number of recommendations to improve access to emergency conception. The report also contains responses from the Local Pharmaceutical Committee and the local Sexual Health service.