Our practice uses "Dr. First," an electronic prescribing system. It enables us to directly transmit most of your prescriptions to either the local pharmacy of your choice or to most mail-order pharmacies. The system transmits all the important data in a form that will minimize errors. The system also tracks your drug allergies and also looks for harmful drug interactions.
We ask our patients for all their drug allergies (including the actual reaction, when known) and their local and or mail-order pharmacy. By sending the prescriptions electronically -- delivery times for mail-order prescriptions are decreased and we expect that our local pharmacies will also handle your prescriptions more effeciently and more accurately.
We request that when you believe you are out of refills of your medication (unless it's a controlled substance - see below), you should contact your pharmacist by phone directly. You should ask if you have refills of the medication in question. If refills are available, the pharmacist can get you your medication. If the refills are not available, the pharmacist can contact us directly about your needed refill. We ask that you not utilize the pharmacies automated (touch-tone) system because it will not recognize a prescription sent in at a later time and will instead tell you you have no refills when in fact there are some at the pharmacy. Using the touch-tone system often generates a request for refills when in fact they are already at the pharmacy. This ties up staff time with researching the request for refills that are already available for pick-up. Your cooperation in this matter will help our efficiency in handling your messages when action is required on our part.
Finally, we also remind our patients that when you are out of your medication refills -- it is often time to return to see your provider. If an appointment is necessary, we may renew some quantity of medication and contact you with the need to return to the office for a visit.
Certain controlled-subtance prescriptions cannot be transmitted and certain pharmacies have varying policies on which prescriptions are allowed to be transmitted. In these instances, you can receive a printed prescription at the office and you should contact the office directly for a refill.