This page has been updated to reflect changes made in the Fill Queue as of version 1.6.5
Once a prescription has been requested by a student or clinician and approved by the prescribing DVM, it is sent over to the Pharmacy's Fill Queue.
(For information on how to customize the new Pharmacy Queue, please see the Pharmacy Queue on the Screen by Screen overview.)
Click on the binoculars in the first column to open the prescription.
If you want to preview the prescription before opening it, mouse over the info dot next to the drug name to see the prescription details.
As soon as a technician clicks on the Start Fill button, the prescription is reserved to them. If your pharmacy has the ability to view or edit reserved prescriptions disabled, this ensures that no other technician will attempt to change the prescription while it is being worked on.
The status of the prescription will change to In Process, and this can also be used as an indicator to other pharmacy technicians that the prescription is reserved.
If the view/edit reserved prescriptions has been enabled for the technician role, then other techs may view the prescription, but as soon as any one user makes changes on the script, a warning will appear on the other user's screen.
A technician may Unreserve a prescription at any time.
There are four fields that can be changed without reserving a prescription: The Patient Status, the status comment, the Fill Comments, and the Prescription Flag.
In this way, a lead technician may change the priorities of a prescription or even pre-assign them (using the free text prescription flag) without reserving the prescription to themselves.
At the top of the screen, the prescription details as sent by the clinical side appear.
This includes the patient demographic information, the approval date (with a time stamp), and details regarding the product requested.
If dosage information has been set up on the product, this will automatically be pulled in as well.
If the prescription contains incorrect information, typos, or anything else that needs to be changed, the technician can Edit the prescription (if they have Edit rights for that pharmacy.)
The Edit screen that loads will be identical to the Prescription Request form as it was submitted by the clinical side.
All fields can be modified to some extent, although expiration dates cannot be set any later than the hospital or drug class defaults.
Depending on your hospital's settings, you can also change the product to a different product in the same generic family, or to any product. Note that the original prescribed product and the final issued product will all be recorded with the user's name who makes that change.
The bill that a prescription will default to the current open order on the patient's record, if one exists.
If there is no open order, then the pharmacy technician has the option to choose between created a new Bill Only episode in the background and a new order, or opening a related order to the original episode. The default behavior will be to open a new order.
The patient and client alerts will appear in a box next to the prescription information.
The technician should check for any critical information that might affect the safety of this patient on the prescription, such as allergies.
If there is an Inventory Area associated with the pharmacy, and the selected product on the prescription has associated inventory in any of its locations, it will pre-load the inventory in the Inventory fields.
Otherwise, the technician who is processing this prescription will need to manually enter in the information.
Choose the pharmacy Inventory Area at the top of the inventory section, and then choose the Inventory Location row by row below.
The tech can then click on the small green plus sign to copy the inventory information down to the label.
Inventory can come from multiple locations, and also multiple lots from within the same location. So if a technician will finish out one bottle and start a new one, both bottles can be recorded.
Right click and choose Add Manual Entry to add another row to the inventory section.
Inventory amounts will be marked as "used" once the prescription is filled, but will not be marked as "sold" until the order is closed.
The information that will appear on the prescription label automatically copies down from other places that it is entered. This includes the name of the drug, the instructions, and the inventory information.
The label information can be adjusted to have a cleaner appearance if desired. The Rx # will load automatically for refills, but will be available to automatically pull (Get Next Rx) or manually input on new prescriptions.
Auxiliary Labels and Drug Sheets
For products that have the auxiliary labels or drug sheets pre-defined either at the generic level or the product level, these fields will load immediately.
The technician can also manually add additional labels or drug sheets as desired. This info will update in real time on the PDF preview of the label and data card when the prescription is saved.
Prescription Label and Data Card
The prescription label can be printed to a label printer that has been set up for the Pharmacy. Clicking on the button will print it there directly.
Otherwise, clicking on the printer icon on the PDF preview will load any network printers that are available to the computer that the technician is working on.
The drug info sheets will print out from this same printer, on the second half of the label paper.
The Prescription Data Card (printed copy of the prescription for archival purposes) can be printed in the same manner.
The technician has two options to have a prescription issued.
They can have the issuing pharmacist work over their shoulder and input their username and password. Or, they can click on Submit for Review, which will change the prescription status to Review and allow the pharmacist to approve it from their own computer.
If an issuing pharmacist is the one filling the prescription, they can input their username into both fields and click Done/Issue without putting the prescription into Review status.
