The Ontario Divisional Court has again affirmed that the posting of remediation orders by the complaints screening committee does not make it a penalty: Longman v. Ontario College of Pharmacists, 2021 ONSC 1610 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/jdqps. This reaffirms a similar conclusion in Geris v. Ontario College of Pharmacists, 2020 ONSC 7437 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/jc4gk. In the Longman case a pharmacist had participated in a series of errors resulting in the dispensing of a drug to a child who was not authorized by prescription to receive it. The Court held that the reasons given recognized the defence of contributing factors to the errors including an unusual prescription, a computer system not designed to handle complex prescriptions, that others at the pharmacy had also made mistakes contributing to the incorrect dispensing and that the pharmacist was not the designated manager responsible for policies and procedures. A remedial order was still indicated. The Court said:
Nor in the circumstances are the remedial measures imposed by the ICRC unduly harsh. While the Applicant acknowledged his error in respect of the September 16, 2018 refill and expressed remorse concerning it, he failed to recognise his other errors as identified by the ICRC. The remedial measures imposed by the ICRC will benefit both the Applicant’s practice and the public. They were neither an error in principle nor clearly unfit.
Public access to the decision does not mean that the remedial nature of the order is altered.