Scribbled on a notepad at reception
A patient rings and reads out a list of medicines, some by brand name, some by what the tablet looks like. The receptionist writes it down, asks them to spell one, checks the date of birth and says it will be ready in a few days. Later, someone types it up and sends it to a clinician.
Twenty more calls like that come in before lunch. A few are the same patient ringing back to check. One request was written on the back of another note and never passed on. The patient turns up at the pharmacy and nothing is there.
Why the phone stays the main route
Patients ring because it feels safest. They can hear that someone has taken the request. Where an online route exists, it often lives in a separate app they have not set up, or a generic contact form that does not ask the right questions, so staff have to ring back anyway.
On the clinic side, requests arrive by phone, email, paper slips and the occasional message through the website. Each one lands somewhere different, and there is no single list showing what has been requested, what has been passed on and what is done. The status only exists in people's heads.
There is also a handover problem. The person who took the call is rarely the person who processes the request, and the person who processes it is rarely the one the patient speaks to when they ring back. Each handover is a chance for a note to be misread or mislaid, and nothing in the process records that it happened.
Clinics that already have a working NHS App or patient system route for repeats should keep using it. This problem mostly affects private clinics, specialist services and practices where that route is not used for everything.
What phone requests are costing you
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Long calls | Reception tied up spelling medicine names |
| Transcription errors | A wrong strength or item written down, caught later if you are lucky |
| Chasing calls | Patients ringing again to check progress |
| Lost requests | Notes that never reached a clinician |
| No record | Nothing to show when a request arrived or who handled it |
The chasing calls are the part most clinics underestimate. A single request can generate two or three extra calls from a patient who has no other way of knowing where it is. Those calls land at the busiest times and add nothing except reassurance, which a text message could have given.
How we build a request route that works
- A structured online request form, linked from your website and confirmation messages, where the patient identifies themselves and selects from their own current repeat items where your system can supply that list, rather than typing names from memory.
- Identity checks proportionate to your policy, such as matching date of birth and a code sent to the registered mobile number.
- Requests from all routes, including phone requests that reception enters into the same form, land in one queue with a status and a timestamp.
- The queue routes each request to the right clinician or team, based on rules you set, for them to review in their normal system.
- Patients get a text when the request is received and again when it has been processed, so there is no need to ring and ask.
- Items that fall outside the simple case, such as a medicine not on the repeat list, are marked for a person to deal with rather than handled automatically.
The software moves the request. It never decides whether anything should be prescribed, and it never suggests anything clinical to a patient.
After the change
Fewer requests arrive by phone, and those that do are entered into the same form by reception, so the process is the same whatever the route. Clinicians see a clean, complete request instead of a handwritten note. Patients know where their request is because they have been told.
The manager can see the queue at any time and spot anything that has been waiting too long.
Reception get a large part of their morning back, and the calls they do take are shorter because the request goes straight into a form with the right fields, not onto a notepad that someone else has to decipher.
Is this your situation?
- Repeat requests are mostly taken over the phone
- Requests arrive by several routes with no single list
- Patients ring back to ask whether their request is ready
- A request has gone missing between reception and a clinician
- Nobody can say how many requests are currently waiting