Does the pharmacy call the doctor when filling a prescription?
Unless you have an open refill, it’s better to visit or call your doctor instead of calling your pharmacy for a prescription. More often than not, pharmacies will NOT call your doctor unless there is a question or concern about your original prescription or refill. While a call to your doctor may be needed to clear up any issues, it is an extra step that your pharmacist takes and can lead to delays in filling your prescription.
If you no longer have any refills on your prescription you should call your doctor’s office first and not the pharmacy.
Although your pharmacist will call your physician on your behalf you can avoid the extra step and call your physician first. Remember, doctors are busy so it may take a day or two for them to call the pharmacy back.
Does the pharmacy call the doctor when filling a prescription?
You can avoid future delays by having your physician write a prescription will multiple refills especially for long-term maintenance medications.
This avoids unnecessary calls between your doctor and the pharmacy. It’s preferable to have your doctor or physician’s assistant call-in your prescription and most pharmacies have a special voice-mail box specifically designed for this.
Many physician’s offices avoid calls altogether by sending your prescription over to your preferred pharmacy electronically. This is known as E-Prescribing. This method is faster and reduces the medication errors associated with trying to read poor handwriting. In fact, sloppy handwriting on prescriptions was attributable to 7,000 deaths in America.
E-Prescribing provides your doctor the ability to electronically send an accurate, error-free and understandable prescription directly to your pharmacy from their office and is a very important part of improving the quality of patient care.
So do yourself a favor and contact your physician’s office if you need a prescription instead of calling your pharmacy. You’ll be glad you did and so will your pharmacist.
