Transferring the first fill of a prescription

[LeoBloom]

Hi,

I am a pharmacy student working in a retail chain in NY. I've worked with quite a few pharmacists and all of them have told me that the first fill of a prescription cannot be transferred (but refills can). I haven't taken the law class(es) yet but a google search failed to turn up anything on this law.

I was wondering if someone knew a bit more about this, if it is something specific to New York or if the rule even exists.

Thanks

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[Ackj]

Hi,

I am a pharmacy student working in a retail chain in NY. I've worked with quite a few pharmacists and all of them have told me that the first fill of a prescription cannot be transferred (but refills can). I haven't taken the law class(es) yet but a google search failed to turn up anything on this law.

I was wondering if someone knew a bit more about this, if it is something specific to New York or if the rule even exists.

Thanks

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

I believe this to be true, although I'm not sure of the specific wording on the law. If they want a transfer, you hand them the rx back. The problem arises when it's something phoned in or e-scripted, and then you are out of stock. Law means that the prescriber will have to phone in/e-scribe to the next pharmacy again.

 

[BidingMyTime]

technically its illegal. In practice, I've seen it done quite often--obviously if there was any problem, the pharmacist who took the transfer of the first fill RX would be legally liable.

 

[LeoBloom]

Well glad to hear this isn't something all those pharmacists just made up. Nobody knows which particular law though?

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[chuckle beast]

In my state there is a specific law regarding this type of situation, not sure about NY.

 

[KARM12]

I thought this only applied to controls.

 

[MindOverMatter]

I always profile the rx, transfer it, then deactivate it in my system. This way there's an image of the original hard copy linked to the rx just in case I would need it in the future. However, some pharmacists will just delete it altogether, acting like it never walked in the door.

I have no clue what the law says on this.

 

[STAR3URY]

NYS law specifies that you can only transfer refills and not prescriptions...meaning you can only transfer 1 fill at a time being that the patient got at least 1 of the fills in the original pharmacy (where the pt. gave in their Rx).

 

[pezdispenser]

This differs a lot between states, but if your state does allow you to do it, generally you must still record the prescription in the patient's profile, it should have a prescription number assigned to it, you need to keep the original hardcopy in your prescription files, and the record must be verified by a pharmacist. The objective is to maintain an audit trail for the prescription.

Even then, some computer systems can't satisfy all of these requirements, so it may also depend on who you are working for, and pharmacists at these places may simply tell you "it's illegal", when that's not really true. It's just not possible to do it legally with their computer system.

So basically you can't transfer it, then just delete it, and you can't just go off what a technician typed up if it was not verified by a pharmacist and you can't pull up the original prescription image.