Three channels, one queue: what happens to a repeat request
A request arrives on WhatsApp at 22:40. Here is every step between that message and the bag on the shelf.
Repeat requests do not arrive tidily. They arrive on whatever the patient had open at the time. The phone during the day, a message in the evening, a note handed over the counter, sometimes all three from the same person in the same week.
The usual result is three separate places to look and no single answer to "what is outstanding". Here is what the alternative looks like, step by step.
22:40, the request arrives
A patient messages asking for their usual inhaler. Nobody is in the pharmacy. Nothing is lost, because the message does not need a person to receive it, only to action it.
Before it goes anywhere, two things get checked automatically: is this patient actually on the repeat register, and is the consent they gave still the current version. If the answer to either is no, the request is flagged rather than quietly processed.
Consent is not a box ticked once. It has a version, and the version matters when someone asks two years later what the patient agreed to.
22:40, the clock starts
The request lands in the queue with a timestamp. Not just for the record, but so the queue can be sorted by what is closest to breaching whatever turnaround the pharmacy has set for itself.
This is the part most systems miss. A list of outstanding work is only useful if it tells you what is most urgent. Otherwise it is a pile, and piles get worked from the top.
09:05, the pharmacist picks it up
The work is dispensed on the pharmacy's own system, as normal. Nothing about the clinical process changes, and nothing should.
What changes is the bookkeeping around it. When the item is marked as dispensed, the count of repeats remaining on that patient's record comes down by one. When it reaches zero, the record says so, which is the point at which somebody needs to ask the surgery for a new script rather than discovering it when the patient arrives.
09:06, the patient is told
A message goes out saying it is ready. The patient did not have to ring to find out, so they do not ring to find out. This is the entire mechanism by which the phone gets quieter.
What the record shows afterwards
- When the request arrived and on which channel
- Which consent version was in force at the time
- How long it sat before it was actioned, and by whom
- That repeats remaining went from two to one
- That the patient was notified, and when
None of that requires anyone to write anything down. It is a by-product of doing the work in one place rather than three.
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