A referral, a walk-in and a queue of prescriptions
A referral lands from NHS 111 or a GP practice. At the same time, someone at the counter asks if the pharmacist can look at a sore throat. The pharmacist is halfway through checking a care home's order. Somebody writes the referral on a sticky note so it is not forgotten.
Each consultation needs to be recorded properly in your clinical services platform, and any outcome sent where it needs to go. On a busy day, some records are completed later, from memory, and a few slip.
At month end, you want to know how many consultations were done, how many were claimed, and whether they match. Answering that takes a spreadsheet and a lot of patience.
Why consultations are hard to keep track of
Consultations arrive through different doors: electronic referrals, walk-ins, phone calls. They are then recorded in a platform that is separate from your PMR, and possibly separate from the one referrals arrived in. The pharmacist doing them is also the person the dispensary is waiting on.
Nothing ties the arrival of a consultation to the completion of its record. So the only check is a person's memory at the end of the day.
The cost of loose ends
| Loose end | What it leads to |
|---|---|
| Referral not seen promptly | A patient waits or goes elsewhere |
| Record completed late | Detail is lost and the record is weaker |
| Record not completed | The consultation may not be claimed |
| No overview | You cannot see how the service is actually running |
Everything clinical, from whether a consultation is appropriate to what is supplied, stays with the pharmacist and the service rules. We only handle the flow of information around it.
One queue, one check, one monthly match
- A single consultation queue on a screen in the dispensary, showing incoming referrals from your platform's notifications or email, plus walk-ins added with one tap at the counter.
- Priority and wait time visible on each item, so the pharmacist can see at a glance what has been waiting longest.
- A completion check at close, listing every consultation in the queue that does not yet have a completed record in your clinical services platform, where that platform allows its data to be read.
- Outcome reminders for anything that needs a follow-up message sent, such as information back to a GP practice, under the process you already use.
- A monthly match between consultations recorded and consultations claimed, with any difference flagged for review before the claim window closes.
- A simple service report: volumes by day and hour, referral versus walk-in, and time from arrival to consultation, so you can plan staffing.
Integration depends heavily on what your clinical services platform exposes. We check that first. Where it offers nothing, we keep the queue and the checks light enough to run with manual ticks.
A day with the queue in sight
Nothing lives on sticky notes. The pharmacist glances at the queue between checks, sees what is waiting and for how long, and fits consultations in by choice rather than by who reminds them. Before close, the completion check shows the two or three records still open while the consultation is fresh.
At month end, the claim is checked against the records rather than assumed. And you have real numbers on when consultations happen, which is the basis for deciding whether a second pharmacist on certain days would pay.
Is this how consultations run for you?
- Referrals and walk-ins are tracked on paper or memory
- Some consultation records are completed hours later
- You are not sure every consultation was claimed
- You cannot say when in the week consultations peak
- The pharmacist is constantly interrupted to be told a referral has arrived