If you are involved in the business of health care, it’s likely that you could benefit from obtaining our Healthcare Merchant Accreditation. As our broadest and most accessible accreditation program, Healthcare Merchant Accreditation is offered to both brick-and-mortar businesses and online-only enterprises around the world, enabling your business to meet requirements to advertise on platforms like Google and Bing and engage in “card not present” pharmacy transactions, as defined by Visa and Mastercard. For US-based pharmacies, Healthcare Merchant Accreditation is also the first step in obtaining the Digital Pharmacy Accreditation. As part of the accreditation, the business will obtain a .pharmacy registered domain name and will be listed as accredited on NABP’s website. We make the application process simple and straightforward, providing your business with a streamlined experience.
The Healthcare Merchant Accreditation helps to ensure safety in the health care marketplace for consumers, giving patients peace of mind that they are buying medication and medical supplies from legitimate businesses and not bad actors.
Confirming Your Eligibility
Before you start your application, it’s important that you make sure your organization is eligible. Many types of health care and health care-adjacent businesses can apply, but not all will be eligible based on our eligibility requirements.
For example, Form 483 Notifications or Warning Letters that you or your affiliates have received from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relating to pharmacy compounding must be resolved. You can find more information about this in sections V and VI of our Eligibility Requirements.
Preparing to Apply for Healthcare Merchant Accreditation
Once you have confirmed that you are eligible, it is important to make sure you comply with all 10 program standards. You should then prepare the materials you will need to apply. These include all licenses, previous disciplinary actions, and other supporting documents. Check out our tips to help you start the application process.
Common Causes of Delays in Accreditation
When you begin the Healthcare Merchant Accreditation process, make sure your company doesn’t run into common issues that can cause delays in obtaining accreditation. Some examples:
Affiliate Compliance: NABP’s review is intentionally broad. We look at all entities involved in the chain of patient care, as well as all co-owned businesses. Make sure all of your affiliates comply with our program standards. Also, be sure to gather the relevant licenses of your affiliates before applying.
Telemedicine: If you or your affiliate(s) offer telemedicine services, make sure all parties comply with state laws in all states where you offer your services. Read our FAQs for more information on what you need to know about telemedicine prior to applying for accreditation.
HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices: If you are considered a “covered entity” under federal law, your HIPAA Notice must be prominently placed on your customer-facing website. Other than not having a HIPAA Notice, the biggest issues we see are that applicants post the HIPAA Guidance document from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or a generic website privacy policy rather than a fully compliant HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices. Model notices are posted on HHS’ website. You can add your business details to the model notice and simply upload it to your site.
Domain Name Registration: The Healthcare Merchant Accreditation requires that an applicant’s domain name registration information be public, accurate, and non-anonymized. The goal of this standard is to provide website transparency. We believe a patient seeking health care information should be able to determine who is behind an accredited website. In practice, this means that privacy proxies do not comply with the standard. For additional details, see our FAQ on this topic. If you use GoDaddy, they provide instructions for how a privacy proxy can be removed.
CBD: If your business offers CBD products, compliance with all federal laws and state laws and regulations is required. Find more information in our FAQ.
Purchase of a .Pharmacy Domain Name: After you have been approved for Healthcare Merchant Accreditation, you must purchase a domain name ending in .pharmacy and make sure it is active. Your accreditation is not complete until you have taken this step! NABP offers a list of authorized registrars to provide domain name registration services.
To learn more about the Healthcare Merchant Accreditation and start your application, request information from us today.