Patients, prescribers, and healthcare professionals generally don’t know what takes it too long to fill a prescription. According to them, pharmacists only have to quantify the required medicine, put it in a container with a label on it.
Drug Plus Pharmacy, being in this industry knows that things are not this simple as they seem to be. Despite a simple process, there can be issues that we need to cater to. Moreover, some additional tasks need attention in order to get patients the right medicine and educate them on its usage.
Dealing with prescription filling every day, we come across many distresses that make the “simple prescription refill” process a little bit complex. We are sure that pharmacy workers in Henderson, Nevada would agree to this fact. In reality, there are only a handful of prescriptions that are actually simple and go smooth as estimated.
But hey! We are not complaining here. The purpose of this article is to highlight what pharmacists have to deal with on an everyday basis. People come to us or call us in emergencies or when they need healthcare products; taking care of patients is not at all easy, but at our store, we make quality our priority.
The following are the different categories of challenges that slow down the pace of the prescription filling process.
Issues that Arise from Patient Side
Sometimes when patients come to get their prescriptions, they often forget important documents with them, which leads to a delayed process.
For Instance,
- The patient doesn’t have their insurance card or wrong insurance card or they lost it or forget to bring it with them.
- Party dropping off the prescription doesn’t know anything about the patient (for example, birth date, address, allergies).
- The prescription needs to be transferred, but the other pharmacy is closed or doesn’t have any refills.
- The prescription was filled recently, so can’t be refilled here again or it was refilled at some other pharmacy.
- A prescription refill is not possible because it was filled with a similar drug recently.
- Fake prescription or the patient can’t pay the co-payment.
- The patient or another party doesn’t have the appropriate identification to pick up the prescription.
Insurance-Related Issues
Sometimes, we have to deal with Insurance –related issues. These issues require special attention; otherwise, they could add additional cost for the patient.
The examples of such cases are:
- The patient has a terminated insurance
- Illegible or outdated information on the insurance card
- Patient’s insurance covers them only in a specific state
- Patient’s insurance card allows services from certain pharmacies
- Prescription is not covered by the patient’s healthcare plan
- The prescription requires prior authorization
- Prescription exceeds the allowable limit of medicine quantity (by either law or the insurance)
- Insurance doesn’t cater to the prescription as deeming it inappropriate for the patient or prefers a different version of the medicine
- Insurance won’t pay for the specific brand but the patient insists on it
Pharmacy-Related Issues
It is possible that refilling takes delays because of some issues or mishaps that happened at the pharmacy end. For Instance,
- Some drug is out of stock and was supposed to come in but didn’t.
- The pharmacy entered the wrong information on the patients’ records (for example, name, wrong drug, quantity, dosage, refills, or prescriber).
- The pharmacy miscounted the prescription and gave the wrong quantity to the patient.
Prescriber Related Issues
- The prescription was not received by the pharmacy or was sent to the wrong pharmacy.
- The prescriber exchanged prescriptions of two patients by mistake.
- The patient’s information is not correct or the prescription and directions are illegible.
- The prescription doesn’t have data completeness (Example, drug name, quantity).
- The number of refills of prescription is inappropriate or illegal.
- The drug isn’t appropriate for the patient as per the allergy/condition review.
- The dose is incorrect or inappropriate for the patient or the patient is allergic to the drug.
- Prescription violates the pharmacy laws.
- The prescriber isn’t eligible to prescribe the drug to a patient.
- The prescriber is nowhere to be found to help correct the prescription.
What Drug Plus Pharmacy professionals Do for you?
You might have a good idea of what might go wrong in the prescription filling process. However, when you have a dedicated and well-trained team by your side, there are lesser chances to minimize performance.
Read More: https://drugpluspharmacy.com/blog/an-overview-of-medicare-part-d-prescription-filling-by-pharmacies/
We ensure that our customers get no delay from our side. Therefore, we have a knitted and technologically advanced system that plays an important role in reducing pitfalls.
Our duty is to provide you with the quality and care that you deserve in a progressive healthcare system. So, no matter what goes wrong, our pharmacy in Henderson gets you instant prescription refills.
