Most times I have a prescription filled it take much longer that I would guess. A recent example, at a simplistic level, all that was needed was for 10 pills to be put into a bottle, however, it took nearly an hour. There did not appear to be other customers waiting. Is the delay because there is a complex process with controlled drugs, or they are under-staffed, or are other things going on?
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It could be any of those. Depending on the drug, it could take more to verify the prescription, or dealing with insurance. Some people call their prescription in before showing up, so they could have been dealing with other fills.
Most of my prescriptions are called in by my doctor ahead of time. I’m just going to the pharmacy to pick them up. I assume a lot of other people have the same thing happen. So if you are going there, even if it appears like they don’t have any work to do, that doesn’t mean they don’t have many other prescriptions to fill before yours.
Paperwork can take time sometimes waiting for the Insurance info to update.
Pharmacist then has to print the labels, count them out, package them etc.
Many times there are many in front of you that have dropped off the prescription and went to do other shopping in the store instead of just standing at the counter. There are also phone in orders. To avoid errors they only work on one at a time in the order they were received.
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Because your prescription isn’t the only thing being filled.
A pharmacy gets hundreds of prescriptions a day. Those have to get filled too.
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Most pharmacies are pretty slammed, and have a queue for filling Prescriptions as they’re received. Straying from the line of 50+ prescriptions in line can really slow down the overall efficiency of the pharmacy, and trust me there are alot of short-tempered people expecting their Prescriptions ready when they think they’ll be ready. When I worked as a pharmacy tech, we wouldnt do a special fill type thing unless the person was literally in need of the medication immediately, or there was a legitimate mistake on our part and it should have been ready for pickup already.
Oh by the way! Almost all pharmacies use a program for running insurance and tracking the prescription fills, and they all include reminder/timer things to tell the pharmacy workers when they should have any specific prescription filled. That list is what all the staff go off of unless the pharmacist themself makes an exception.
Sorry you have to wait quite a while sometimes, but chances are they’re doing their best and dont want to make anyone wait for sometimes very needed medication.
Short answer: Paperwork and safety.
Long answer:
When the pharmacy gets a prescription they need to fill out appropriate paperwork saying they received it and are now responsible for filling it.
Then they need to double check what other medications you’ve recently been prescribed to make sure the new thing the doctor prescribed you isn’t going to interact with any of them and unintentionally hurt you.
Then insurance. If you have it, guessing you want them to pay for the med right? More paperwork.
Then they count out the medication, double check it, and verify your information.
And all of that is for your prescription. Now imagine automatic refills, emergency prescriptions called in by doctors, etc. all being filled before you even walk in. You could be the only one in the pharmacy and it could still be an incredibly busy day for them.
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