The Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 (VMR 2013) set out mandatory record-keeping requirements for every medicine dispensed from a UK veterinary practice. RCVS inspectors treat medicines records as a primary focus — practices with incomplete batch number records, missing prescriber details, or gaps in their controlled drug register face formal findings. Whether a practice handles this in a standalone dispensing system, within their PIMS, or in a spreadsheet significantly affects how reliably they can demonstrate compliance on inspection day.
The Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 classifies all veterinary medicines into categories that determine who can supply them and under what conditions. The main categories relevant to practice dispensing are:
| Classification | Full name | Who can supply | Prescription required |
|---|---|---|---|
| POM-V | Prescription Only Medicine – Veterinarian | Vet only (or pharmacist on written prescription) | Yes — written Veterinary Prescription |
| POM-VPS | Prescription Only Medicine – Veterinarian, Pharmacist, Suitably Qualified Person | Vet, pharmacist, or SQP | Yes — from prescriber |
| NFA-VPS | Non-Food Animal – Veterinarian, Pharmacist, SQP | Vet, pharmacist, or SQP | No written prescription required |
| AVM-GSL | Authorised Veterinary Medicine – General Sales List | Any retail outlet | No |
For POM-V medicines — the category that covers antibiotics, controlled drugs, and the majority of prescription items dispensed in practice — a written or computer-generated prescription must exist for every supply. The prescription must be retained.
For POM-V and POM-VPS medicines supplied from a veterinary practice, VMR 2013 specifies the minimum information that must be recorded at the point of supply:
All dispensing records must be retained for a minimum of five years from the date of supply. This applies to both paper and electronic records. For practices using a PIMS, this means understanding how the system handles data retention if you switch supplier, migrate platforms, or close a site.
A practice that switches PIMS and migrates only active patient records — leaving historical dispensing data in a decommissioned system — may find itself technically non-compliant if those records become inaccessible before the five-year window has closed. Before any PIMS migration, confirm what happens to historical dispensing records and how they will remain accessible and retrievable.
Schedule 3 and Schedule 4 controlled drugs require additional record-keeping beyond the standard VMR 2013 requirements. The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 requires:
Most PIMS platforms include a controlled drug register module. The key compliance question is whether the system enforces running balance calculation automatically, or requires manual entry that could be incorrect or omitted under clinical pressure.
VMR 2013 permits verbal prescriptions in genuine emergencies only. Where a verbal prescription is used, the practice must:
In practice, verbal prescriptions should be exceptional. Practices using them routinely — for example, to streamline repeat dispensing — are not using them in compliance with the Regulations and would face a finding on inspection.
VMR 2013 requires that veterinary practices carry out an annual audit of their medicine stock. The audit should reconcile physical stock counts against purchase records and dispensing records. A system that generates a full audit report — purchases in, dispensed out, current stock on hand, discrepancies — makes this significantly less labour-intensive than a manual spreadsheet approach.
Practices that rely on manual stock management typically find audit day reveals discrepancies they cannot explain: product missing from shelves that never appeared in dispensing records, or vice versa. The explanations are usually mundane (clinical team bypassed the dispensing workflow during an emergency, stock moved between sites without being logged) but unexplained discrepancies on a controlled drug count are a serious inspection finding.
The difference between dispensing compliance software done well and done badly is whether the system enforces correct data entry or merely provides fields for it. A form that includes a batch number field but allows it to be left blank is not a compliance tool — it is a liability record.
When evaluating any PIMS or standalone dispensing module, the questions to ask are:
The leading platforms — ezyVet, Provet Cloud, and RxWorks — all include dispensing modules. What varies is how strictly they enforce these fields and how easily they generate audit-ready reports. Practices that have experienced an RCVS inspection with findings on medicines records typically report that the enforcement gaps were known workflow shortcuts that the system permitted rather than prevented.
For referral hospitals, multi-site groups, and practices with complex dispensing workflows (in-house pharmacy, multiple species, research programmes), the generic dispensing module in a standard PIMS may not provide the enforcement rigour or audit reporting needed. A bespoke dispensing compliance system built to the exact VMR 2013 requirements — with mandatory field enforcement, CD register automation, stock reconciliation, and five-year record archiving built in as architecture rather than optional features — removes the human workflow gaps that create inspection findings.