Prescription Fill Screen
- Cathy Allison
Prescription Fill Screen
The Prescription Fill Screen is the main working screen for pharmacy techs processing a prescription, or a pharmacists reviewing a previously issued prescription.
There are four tabs on every prescription - the Prescription Details for the current active fill, the Refill History for any previously issued fills for the same prescription, a Patient Prescription History containing an overview of their other prescriptions, and a Prescription Change Log to show what fields were saved by which users at which time.
Prescription Header
At the top of the prescription screen are controls on a header row to reject, cancel, start fill, transfer (to another internal pharmacy), Hold, or Edit the prescription. Some of these buttons are locked behind privileges and should be reserved for the supervising pharmacists.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Back to Search | Returns to the Prescription Fill Queue without making any changes to this prescription. Use this if you selected the wrong prescription. |
| Reject | Changes the status of the prescription to Rejected. A message is required to reject a prescription, and can be used as a teaching tool to explain what is wrong for student requestors. A notice will be sent to the requesting student or clinician. For example, "this is the wrong product for this species" or "based on the patient weight this is the wrong drug strength." These systems can also be set up using the Drug Interaction Warnings, but may not be able to catch every possible instance of a potential problem. |
| Cancel | Changes the status of the prescription to Canceled. A message is required to cancel a prescription. The most common use case is that the prescription was requested, but the client decided they didn't want to pay for the medication, or an alternate treatment method was determined after the fact. Once a prescription is requested from a patient record, a student may not have the rights to cancel a prescription, and so may be forced to contact the pharmacy directly. |
| Start Fill | Changes the status of the prescription to In Process and gives the option to reserve the prescription to the current logged in user, preventing anyone else from making changes. Once a fill is started, the prescription can no longer be Rejected, but it can still be put on Hold or Cancelled. |
| Reserve | This option appears once the Start Fill button is pressed. This locks the prescription down to only the current user, preventing anyone else from making changes. |
| Transfer | Changes the Pharmacy of the prescription. This only applies to internal pharmacies; an internal script cannot be changed to an External Fill prescription - the script must be Edited for that instead. |
| Hold | Puts the prescription on Hold and prevents it from being filled. Use this option as a pharmacist to research the specifics of the prescription, or if there is uncertainty that the patient will need this particular drug. Scripts on hold cannot be cancelled, reserved, or issued. |
| Unhold | Appears when a prescription is in Hold status. Removes the Hold from the script so that it can continue to be filled as normal. |
| Edit | Unlocks the prescription fields and allows the user to adjust the details of the prescription itself. This can be used to correct a small mistake that does not warrant a full rejection, such as a typo in the Instructions. This can also be used to issue an alternate product in the case of the requested product being unavailable, such as substituting twice as many 125 mg tablets when the 250 mg tablets are out of stock. |
Prescription Details
This tab contains the information about the specific prescription you are viewing. You can see the patient details, the date and time the prescription was started and approved, the requestor and prescribing DVM, and information about the requested drug and instructions.
This tab also contains sections for filling the prescription, printing the labels and drug information sheets, and ultimately issuing the prescriptoin.
Prescription Panel
The upper two thirds of the panel is read only, unless you are editing the prescription.
The bottom section of this panel includes information intended to be added or changed by a pharmacy tech.
Patient, client, and episode alerts are also included on the right hand panel as a reference. For example, any patient allergies that are tagged with an alert will appear to help the pharmacist make an informed decision about the safety of the drug for the patient.
You can CTRL+Click on the patient name and owner to open those screens in another tab.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Patient Info | The top left column contains brief demographic information about the patient, including the species, breed, weight, and sex. |
| Prescription Info | The top right column contains high level information about the prescription, such as the status, the pharmacy it was sent to, and the requesting student or staff member and prescribing DVM that approved it. Requests that have not yet been approved will show the DVM to whom it was submitted for approval. |
| Drug Info | The middle left contains the prescription information for the drug requested, expected expiration, refills, and any client instructions. |
| Dose Calculator | If the requesting student or prescribing DVM entered in this information, the dosage calculator will display the calculations. This feature can be turned off for students who are learning how to calculate dosages. The information can also be automatically input, if all the necessary setup is done on the back end (e.g. the product setup has the correct dosage and the species has the K constant entered under sex setup.) |
| Draft Instructions | UVIS legacy information for draft instructions can be used to build out the instruction set. This was left in place as a teaching tool, to demonstrate to students the appropriate patterns needed to write clear instructions. This requires the Draft Information to be set up under the pharmacy as well as the specific product. It has been replaced by Drug Profiles on prescriptions for a faster workflow. |
| Bill | The patient order that this prescription is to be charged against. If the patient has no open orders, the pharmacy may have the option to create a new related order as appropriate. |
| Priority | The patient priority status. These are custom options that are set up under the Pharmacy Setup screens. Use statuses that are matched to your workflow, such as adding in Inpatient, Going Home, ASAP/Stat, or Mail Order options. These priorities can also be sorted on the prescription queue, and color coded to help the pharmacy staff focus on the most time sensitive prescriptions first. |
| Priority Comment | Any other information sent from the clinical staff, such as the planned time to go home. |
| Fill Comment | Any other information sent from the clinical staff, such as the client address to mail to, or a request for a specific compound flavor for the patient. |
| Prescription Flag | A flag that can be set internally by the pharmacy to help with prioritizing beyond patient status. For example, if a drug must be prepared in a positive pressure room, that can be added as a flag so that multiple scripts with that condition can be processed together. Unlike the priority comment and the fill comment, this is usually not set by the clinical team. |
Billing and Inventory Information
The next section on the Prescription Details screen is where you can identify which inventory location the prescription should be pulled from. If the item is only listed as being available in one location, then that location will automatically fill in. If it is stored in multiple locations, you will need to select the correct one from the drop down menu.
The pharmacy tech processing the prescription should input the lot, serial, manufacturerer, and drug expiration date, as well as the quantity used.
If one bottle is finished in one location, then the product can be pulled from two separate locations, and the total added up to match the quantity requested.
Right click in the box outside of the drug and choose Add Manual Entry to add a second line in this case.
Click on the small green plus sign next to the Used quantity to bring down that line's inventory information to the prescription label.
In Version 2.2 or later of VetView, the inventory may be locked down to prevent editing as these rows will also edit the Inventory Location tables. If the wrong inventory item auto loads, use the Add Manual Entry feature to load a second row, and choose the correct inventory, or manually add the lot, serial, manufacturer, and expiration.. Leave the row that automatically loaded as quantity 0, and enter the quantity used wholly from the new row.
If the inventory item you have available to dispense does not match the inventory in your location, contact your inventory manager to request a Reconciliation to get the levels corrected.
Prescription Label and Data Card
This section is where the pharmacy technician can adjust the details as they will appear on the prescription label and enclosed drug data card. Auxiliary labels can be added to the main label (in addition to having any warning stickers applied to the bottle itself as appropriate) and the tech has the option of turning off data sheets that do not need to be printed. These options can be set as a default at the product level as well, if there are certain products that are primarily used as an in-hospital drug and do not need the drug sheets or additional warnings intended for client labeling.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| RX # | Enter in a manual prescription number, or automatically generate the next prescription number in a sequence with the Get Rx. A prescription cannot be issued until a number has been added. The suffix indicates how many refills have been added to this prescription. If this is the first fill, it should always be zero. |
| Drug Label | The name of the product as it will appear printed on the label. This may be different than the name of the product that is being sold, especially for compounds or name brand items. The default information for this field can be changed in the Prescription section of Product Setup. |
| Instructions | The doctor's instructions as they will be printed on the label. |
| Quantity | The exact quantity of product being dispensed. |
| Expiration | The expiration of the drug being dispensed, not the expiration of the prescription. |
| Lot | The log number of the product being dispensed. This information may be legally required in your state to facilitate possible future recalls. |
| Manufacturer | The name of the company that manufactured the drug. |
| Additional Instructions | Any extra information that may be important for the consumer to know that is not already covered in other fields, such as how to open the container. |
| Auxiliary Labels | Labels that were added via the Generic link or on the product itself will already be present. Checked labels will be printed on the prescription label. Any additional labels can be manually added to the prescription label and looking them up. |
| Drug Info Sheets | The drug sheet that is associated with the generic link or specific product being dispensed. Checked drug info sheets will be printed on the bottom half of the prescription label paper and can be included with Go Home client instructions as required by law or when appropriate. For products that will be used in hospital, these flags can be unchecked if they don't need to be printed. For multi-page drug info sheets, this may save on paper in the long run. |
| Prescription Label Preview | A preview in PDF format of how the prescription label will be printed. This report should be formatted to match your specific label paper layout. |
| Prescription Data Card Preview | A preview in PDF format of how the prescription data card (information insert) will be printed. |
| Report Selector | Choose which format of the Prescription Label Report you want to use, if your pharmacy supports more than one. |
| Printer Button | Any printers that are associated with the Pharmacy that this prescription was sent to. If a printer is offline and unavailable, it will appear in red. Click on the button to print the previewed report on that specific printer. |
Prescription Preparation and Issuance
The final section on the Prescription Details tab is a place to indicate which Pharmacy Tech prepared the prescription, and either have an over the shoulder approval from a Pharmacist, or set it to Review status if the pharmacist is not immediately available.
Prescriptions already in Review status will only have the Save and Done buttons.
Refill History
This tab allows you to view the refills on a prescription that had them available. A small panel on the left contains the dates and status, and a larger box on the right contains the details of the prescription at the time it was refilled.
Use this tab to review the refill history and discuss and necessary changes to the pattern with the client.
Patient Prescription History
This tab contains a high level overview of all of the patient's past prescriptions. Use this tab to review all of the products the patient has been prescribed in the past, and to make any adjustments to the current prescription accordingly.
Additional details about each prescription can be viewed by clicking on the binocular icon.
Certain actions are also available to users with the appropriate rights, such as requesting refills, copying a prescription that has run out of refills to make a new one, or cancelling the refills entirely.
Prescription Change Log
This tab contains an overview of the fields that were changed on the prescription from the time it was requested to the time it was issued. Fields that were changed will display highlighted and in bold.
The user who made the changes and saved them will appear next to the date in the left panel.
Use this tool when understanding what changes were made and when. This is also evidence that can be used in discussions with clinical staff - for example, if a product was requested as ASAP but not picked up by a student until several hours later, the actual time it was marked as Ready for Pickup will appear in this list.
In the example below, the weight of the patient was changed since it was out of date on the patient record, and then the prescription status was changed from Approved to In Process.
VetView Wiki Most recent releases of VetView: Version 5.0.2 and 4.2.8 Hotfix (Released 12/20/2024)
To see commonly used terms in VetView Hospital, please visit our Hospital Glossary of Terms.