i kind of think i should not have to manually send a message to my doctor or pharmacy that says ‘i noticed you did not fill this prescription for the 10mg version of this medication because you are out of stock. perhaps you should try the 5mg version and just double the daily dose. thanks’ like i think that should happen automatically. that should be something that happens without me having to relay messages to various parties
perhaps, and this is insane but stay with me, perhaps the doctor and the pharmacy could communicate directly. the pharmacy could call the doctor and say, “hello, we are out of stock of the 10mg formulation. do you think the 5mg formulation would be alright, and we’ll just send double the amount to the client?” and the doctor would say “yes, i think thats fine”. there could even be large databases that have information about whether the drug in question needs to be dispensed in particular doses or not, perhaps as a time-release consideration, or whether it is ok to swap out dosing units like this. and this database could already be accessible to the pharmacy, perhaps through some sort of global digital communication system, and then they wouldnt have to communicate with the doctor at all, the prescription would already have information in it about dosing dispensary guidelines. imagine
as a pharmacy technician i agree very much. this would make my job easier too
Especially if patients starting to fill prescriptions with the pharmacy could actually fill out something, right at the beginning. something like a doordash “acceptable substitutions” form, but for pills. so we have on file exactly what they would prefer to have done in the event of a medication being out of stock
(wait until in stock? Fill with a different dose of a different size tablet? Fill short supply with whatever small amount we have in stock if it’s not enough for the full prescription? Contact doctor to change to something else comparable? Patients do have different preferences on this, but if we have to find time to call them each time it’s gonna take a while. Especially for us overnight techs. Who do have time to fill a lot of prescriptions but do not have the option of calling patients to confirm anything, because it’s the middle of the night)
And then it would be super nice if our software actually stored this preference in a standardized place on the patient profile, and we were all actually trained to know where that place is and what to do about it, and maybe it even automatically notified us of the preferred options, with a dialog box or something, if it looked like we were marking the prescription as not in stock
I feel like it’s possible this is within the capacity of human technology, at this point in time
sounds reasonable, but what percentage of people won’t listen when you talk or read the label and end up with a half or double dose?
Unfortunately true, there are quite a lot of patients who I can imagine filling out a form saying “yes please give me 2 of the 5mg if the 10mg ever isn’t in stock,” and then receiving the 5mg tablets we’ve filled in accordance with this preference, with correct updates in the printed instructions, plus those bright colored warning stickers we add whenever something is unexpectedly changed about the prescription, and getting verbally counseled by the pharmacist about the change… and then would still end up taking the wrong dose. This is a certain percentage of customers in every field, and there’s only so much you can do for them.