AUTOMATED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING PRESCRIPTIONS

摘要

An automated system and method for processing prescription requests is disclosed, whereby a patient or physician enters a prescription request to an automated pharmacy prescription processing system. For example, a request for a new or refill prescription can be transmitted from a physician's office to the prescription processing system as a digital file or facsimile message, or using keypad or voice commands in an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system running in the prescription processing system. A request for a prescription refill can also be entered by a patient using an IVR system, or the patient can physically carry the refill prescription request to a pharmacy for entry to the prescription processing system by a technician. The automated pharmacy system determines whether the new or refill prescription request can be filled by a central fill inventory. The automated pharmacy prescription processing system sends eligible, pending prescription requests to an automated central fill prescription request processing system. The automated central fill processing system processes and fills each valid prescription request from a central fill inventory, initiates a quality assurance procedure to double-check each prescription to be filled, labels the double-checked, approved prescriptions, and routes them to a staging area for shipment to the appropriate pharmacy stores.