Playbook, pharmacy
The question a pharmacy is asked more often than any other
It arrives twenty times a day and the assistant cannot answer it, which sounds like a dead end until you notice where these actually get stuck. A prescription does not begin at the pharmacy. It has to be requested, signed by a prescriber and sent electronically before anybody behind the counter can touch it, and most of the waiting happens before that.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for order status holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Nothing starts until an electronic prescription reaches the pharmacy from the prescriber, so somebody chasing on day one is usually chasing the wrong building, and saying so is more useful than a status could ever be.
- The prescription lands at whichever pharmacy the patient has nominated, which means anybody who nominated a different branch years ago is waiting at a counter it was never sent to.
- A repeat and an acute item behave differently, because a repeat runs against a standing authorisation while an acute one needs the prescriber to decide again, and the second takes longer for reasons the pharmacy does not control.
- Where only part of a prescription could be dispensed the patient leaves with an owing slip, so ready is not a yes or a no here, it is a partial state that has to be explained rather than reported.
How it arrives
- is my prescription ready to collect
- i ordered my repeat on monday why is it not here
- how long does it take once the doctor sends it
- you gave me a slip for the rest of it when can i get it
- can you check if the surgery has sent it over
- i changed my pharmacy is it coming here now
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The sequence from request to counter, written as steps | Who requests, who signs, how it reaches you and what you do then, with the ordinary time each step takes. Most of these messages end at step one, and somebody who can see the whole chain stops ringing about step one. |
|---|---|
| What a nomination is and how somebody changes it | Where a prescription goes by default, what happens when it was set at a previous pharmacy, and who makes the change. Almost nobody knows they have one until it goes wrong. |
| Your owing slip arrangement | What the slip means, how the patient hears when the rest arrives, and how long you hold it. This is the state that produces the most anxious messages and it is almost never written down anywhere. |
| How you tell somebody it is ready | A message, a call, or nothing at all because collection is whenever suits. If the answer is nothing at all, publish that, because a person waiting for a text will wait indefinitely. |
The reply
I cannot see the dispensary or look anything up, so I cannot tell you whether yours is ready. What I can tell you is how it works: the request goes to your prescriber, they sign it, and it reaches us electronically at the pharmacy you have nominated, and only then do we start [1]. If it was requested in the last day or two it is usually still at that stage. Our usual turnaround once it is with us, and how we let you know, are on our prescriptions page [2].
The refusal is the first line rather than the last, because anything before it gets read as a status. The sequence is then given as the answer, since the commonest cause of the wait sits at a step the pharmacy plays no part in. Naming nomination catches the smaller group who are waiting at the wrong counter entirely.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor gives a name, a date of birth or an item and asks the assistant to check, or says something has been owing for longer than the period on your slip.
I cannot look anybody up. Ring the pharmacy, or leave me your name and an email with what you are waiting for, and the team will check it against the dispensary and come back to you.
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 a prescription is ready, is being worked on, or has arrived, because nothing here can see the dispensary.
- Never say why an item is owing, since the reason may be about the medicine rather than about supply.
- Never confirm that a named person has a prescription with you, even to somebody who says they collect every month.
- Never tell anybody what to do about a dose while they wait, however long the delay has been.
Questions
- Could we connect the dispensing system so it could check?
- No. It has no access to any system and cannot be given any, so a status question always ends at the counter. What it removes is the much larger group asking how long it takes, which needs no system at all.
- Is explaining the sequence really enough?
- It is the only thing that reduces the volume. Somebody who understands that the prescriber signs first stops ringing the pharmacy on the day they ordered, and that is where most of these calls come from.
- What should it say about an owing slip?
- Explain what the slip means and how you contact people when the rest is in. It cannot say where a particular one has got to, and the explanation is what stops the second call three days later.
Keep reading
- Everything for a pharmacyOpening hours, services and prescription collection are safe ground. Anything about a medicine belongs with the pharmacist.
- Handling order status in generalThe most asked question in retail support and the one a document-based assistant cannot answer. What it can do instead, and where handover sits.
- What a pharmacy delivery is, and what it will not doA delivery round covers set areas on set days, and some items cannot be left on a doorstep at all. What to publish about both.
- The ingredient question, and the three ways it arrivesIngredient questions at a pharmacy are clinical almost every time. Why the leaflet, the pharmacist and the prescriber are the only routes.
- Sorting a pharmacy complaint before it is even loggedA wait at the counter and a concern about what was dispensed are different complaints. Only one of them can wait for an email reply.
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.