A phone that rings with the same question
The counter assistant puts the phone down and it rings again. "Is my prescription ready?" To answer, they ask for the name and date of birth, check the PMR for an EPS message, walk to the shelves, check the owings box, and often come back to say it has not come through from the surgery yet.
That call takes a few minutes. It is repeated dozens of times a day, and it lands in the middle of everything else: a patient at the counter, a query from the pharmacist, a delivery arriving.
Why the calls do not stop
Patients cannot see the journey. From their side, they asked the surgery for a repeat and then nothing happened. They do not know whether the request was approved, whether it has reached you, whether an item is owed, or whether the bag is on the shelf.
Several different things look identical to the patient. The prescription may still be at the surgery. It may have arrived but be waiting in the queue. It may be done except for one owed item. The call is the only way they have of finding out which.
The cost of answering the same question
| Area | What it takes away |
|---|---|
| Counter | Time with the people standing in front of you |
| Dispensary | Interruptions to the person labelling or checking |
| Surgery relations | Patients are told to ring the surgery, who send them back to you |
| Patients who cannot get through | They turn up in person, often before the bag is ready |
Status messages tied to your dispensing stages
We start by agreeing a small set of stages that match how your dispensary actually works, and then attach a message to the ones patients care about.
- Stage capture. As prescriptions move from received to labelled, checked and bagged, the stage is recorded, from your PMR where it exposes this, or from a quick barcode scan at each point.
- A received message, optional, telling the patient the prescription has arrived from the surgery and roughly how your process works.
- An owing message when part of the prescription is waiting for stock, so the patient knows before they come in.
- A ready message when the bag is on the shelf, with your opening hours.
- A self-service lookup on your website or by text, where a patient enters their details and sees the current stage without calling.
- A small daily report of call reasons, if you want to log them, so you can see whether the texts are changing anything.
Messages go through an SMS provider such as Twilio, and you approve every wording. If your PMR already sends ready texts, we build around it rather than duplicate it.
When patients know before they ring
Many callers only wanted to know one thing, and now they get it without asking. The calls that are left are the ones with a real question: a missing item, a dose query for the pharmacist, a problem with the surgery. Those deserve the time.
Patients also stop turning up too early, because they wait for the ready text, so the counter is less crowded with people waiting for bags that do not exist yet.
Does your phone ring like this?
- A large share of calls ask whether a prescription is ready
- Staff often have to walk to the shelves to answer
- Patients arrive before their prescription has reached you
- Patients bounce between you and the surgery
- Your PMR does not send ready messages, or only some of the time