Playbook, pharmacy
Sorting a pharmacy complaint before it is even logged
Most complaints a pharmacy receives are about the counter: a queue, an owing item nobody followed up, a manner on a bad afternoon. Those belong in a procedure and get answered in writing. One kind cannot wait for that, because somebody who thinks they were handed the wrong thing may still be taking it while they type.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A complaint that something was dispensed wrongly has to interrupt the process instead of entering it, because the person may have the pack in front of them and the first line of the reply needs to be stop and ring us.
- A pharmacy runs a written complaints procedure and separately records dispensing incidents internally, which are two different trails, and nothing here may sound as though a chat message has started either one.
- Complaints frequently name the prescriber rather than the pharmacy, because the customer cannot see where in the chain it broke, and an assistant that accepts the framing has blamed a surgery on the pharmacy's behalf.
- The person complaining is usually a regular who collects every month, so the tone is a matter of a continuing relationship rather than of a single transaction that went wrong.
How it arrives
- i was given the wrong tablets
- i want to complain about how i was spoken to at the counter
- nobody rang me about the rest of my prescription
- who do i complain to about a pharmacy
- i have been waiting three weeks for an item
- can i have a copy of your complaints procedure
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The written complaints procedure with its stages | Who receives one, how quickly it is acknowledged, who signs the answer and how long each stage takes. Publish the version you would hand across the counter to somebody who asked for it. |
|---|---|
| The wording for anything supplied wrongly | A short block telling the person to stop and ring the pharmacy now, with the number, ahead of anything about a process. It has to sit where the assistant reaches it before anything else. |
| Where a complaint goes above the pharmacy | The external route as you publish it, and the separate route for a concern about a prescriber. Sending somebody to the wrong body costs them weeks and reflects on you rather than on the body. |
| Who reviews a dispensing concern | The named role, usually the responsible pharmacist. Naming a person is what turns the handover into an escalation instead of into a form. |
The reply
If you think you have been given the wrong medicine, please stop and ring the pharmacy on the number above now rather than waiting for a reply to this [1]. For anything else, we have a written complaints procedure setting out who looks at it and how long each stage takes, and you can ask for a copy [2]. I am sorry this has happened. Leave me your name, an email and what happened, and it goes to the pharmacist today.
The urgent branch is first and unconditional, because the reader may not get past the opening line and the cost of being wrong is not symmetric. The procedure follows for everything else. The apology is for the experience and says nothing at all about what was dispensed, which is the distinction that keeps the pharmacy out of trouble later.
Where it stops
The trigger. Every complaint, and immediately on any suggestion that the wrong item, the wrong strength or the wrong quantity was supplied.
This needs a person here rather than me, and if it is about what you were given, please ring now instead of waiting. Leave me your name, an email and what happened, and the pharmacist will pick it up.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say whether the right thing was dispensed, or that a mistake was or was not made.
- Never tell somebody to keep taking, to stop taking, or to set aside anything while a complaint is looked at.
- Never blame the prescriber, the driver or a supplier for what has gone wrong.
- Never say a complaint has been logged, recorded or passed to anybody, because the message is an email and nothing more than that.
Questions
- Should it try to resolve a complaint about a wait?
- No. It should recognise it and route it. A cited quotation about turnaround times sent to somebody who has waited three weeks proves nobody read the message, and that is the reply that gets screenshotted.
- Will the urgent branch not fire too often?
- It will fire on some ordinary complaints, and that is the right trade. Telling somebody to ring when they did not need to costs one phone call. The other error costs considerably more than that.
- Can it tell somebody what happened with their prescription?
- No. It cannot see the dispensary or any record, so it cannot investigate, confirm or explain. It takes the details and hands them over, which is the whole of what it can honestly do here.
Keep reading
- Everything for a pharmacyOpening hours, services and prescription collection are safe ground. Anything about a medicine belongs with the pharmacist.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- Getting to the counter, and then being able to use itA step at the door, a high counter and a private room. Which requests can be described and which need the pharmacist to agree.
- Delete my details, said to a pharmacyA dispensing record has a retention period the pharmacy did not set, and a nomination is changed elsewhere rather than deleted here.
- Somebody needs a receipt for something they collected in MarchA till receipt, a private prescription receipt and a monthly account are different documents, and only staff can reissue any of them.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.