What does pharmacist reviewing prescription mean at walgreens

Pharmacy Prescription Process: Definition & Steps

Every pharmacy has a specific pharmacy prescription process that must be followed by all technicians and the pharmacists to ensure the quality and authenticity of a prescription filling. There are some famous prescription filling process steps that should be abided by all.

Let us check all the necessary details about a typical pharmacy prescription process and all the prescription filling process steps one by one.

What Does Processing a Prescription Mean?

Processing a prescription means taking all the necessary steps that should be taken to evaluate a prescription, verify its medical importance, benefits or the side effects, enter a patient’s insurance data along with insurance plans and to guide the patient about the specific dosage and possible side effects properly. When all of these steps are followed from receiving a medical prescription to delivering the medicines to the patient, a prescription is fully processed.

How Does a Pharmacist Fill a Prescription?

A pharmacist clearly checks your prescription, reads it, and makes confirmation from your prescriber before proceeding to the prescription filling process steps.

Whenever a patient enters into any pharmacy along with a written prescription by a doctor or any senior health advisor or if any doctor describes a specific medicine prescription electronically, the pharmacist ensures that all the prescribed medicines are readable and then he checks the patient’s insurance plan to ensure that the patient’s health plan covers those prescribed medicines. After checking all details about the patient’s insurance policy, the pharmacist communicates with the patient regarding the specific prescribed medications, the suggested medicines, the cheap alternatives, the suggested dosages, and the possible side effects to help the patient choose a specific prescribed medicine either it would be covered by his insurance or there would be a co-payment between patient and health insurance company. After all these steps of the pharmacy prescription process, the patient finally gets his favorable medicine by hand or the chosen prescribed medicines are mailed to the patient after the approved electronic prescriptions by the doctors.

How Long Does It Take for a Pharmacy to Fill a Prescription?

On average, a pharmacy may take about 15-30 minutes to fill a single prescription because there are many things to do during filling a prescription and it is really a sensitive and responsible job to fill a prescription accurately according to each patient’s age, condition, health insurance plan, dosage, patient’s routine, diet, budget and the possible side effects. A good pharmacy has to take care of all these matters before filling a prescription; therefore, it takes some considerable time because pharmacists have to contact and negotiate with multiple people and departments.

What are the Steps of Processing a Prescription?

There are many important steps involved during a pharmacy prescription and filling process. All of these steps should be obliged by all the stakeholders involved during a complete prescription process.

Following are five major steps involved in each prescription or filling process.

1. Receiving and Reviewing Prescription
2. Translating the Prescription
3. Data Entry
4. Filling the Prescription
5. Patient Counselling

1) Receiving and Reviewing Prescription

The very first and foremost step of processing a prescription is receiving a proper prescription by a doctor, physician or nurse and then it is reviewed by the pharmacists to confirm that it is still available or not in the desired dosage and is it covered by the patient’s health insurance or not. There are many ways of receiving the prescriptions. The pharmacist may get the prescriptions via voice call by a health professional, via fax by the hospitals, via hand-in written prescriptions that are taken into by the patients or those who are close to the patients. Nowadays, E-prescriptions are becoming popular due to a revolution in technology. Especially in this post-Covid era, the doctors may prefer to prescribe the E-prescriptions that are reviewed by the pharmacists and the desired medicines are shipped to the patients at their doorsteps.

2) Translating the Prescriptions

Translating the medical prescriptions is yet another important step of the prescription filling process. Many doctors or physicians may use the specific medical language and medical codes while prescribing to the patients. Those prescriptions may need to translate into a simple language that can be understood by all pharmacists and the technicians on the front desk. Furthermore, e-prescriptions make it possible for patients to get prescriptions from the foreigner doctors, so they may send prescriptions in their native languages that need to be translated before processing. That is why; the best online pharmacy in Marylandmust have some medical translating professionals too.

3) Data Entry

The translated prescriptions are then entered into the database to check the availability or the prescribed medicines. If they are available, then the patient’s personal details and the insurance details are recorded in the database for further proceedings and shipment.

4) Filing the Prescriptions

The next step is to fill the prescriptions after checking all the information about the patient, validating the insurance policy, suggesting the most effective and affordable medicine. That is why it takes some time to fill the prescriptions. Once the prescription is properly filled by a pharmacist and his data is updated, then you can easily ask any qualitative pharmacy like Knowles Wellness to refill your prescription online in Kensington MD.

5) Patient Counselling

Patient counselling is the most recommended step regarding processing a prescription. The pharmacists should do proper counselling of each patient regarding the medicine dosages, the diet plan with the medicine, the possible side effects and the cheap alternatives in case of emergency or broken insurance, so the patient will not quit the medicines due to poor financial situation.