Bingo! on your last sentence. We haven't called around to see, but our sense is it is rather quick. In the two to three minute range. Partly is how it is set up. Our most popular pharmacy is a subsidiary of the hospital so the packets go all over the place before hitting the pharmacy.
The biggest issue is what I call the "Power of last authority." I can tell my patient a million times to wait at x-ray until I get on the phone with them and give them the result, but if the tech tells them to go home, 90% of the time they will.
I don't know, but it seems as though the pharmacies just say to them, "your doctor didn't send it," and that is the page I get back even though the patient watched me ePrescribe it. All they have to do is tell the patient some times it takes 15 minutes or so and to take a seat or maybe it got lost in cyberspace.
Of course, if the pharmacist would call us directly instead of making the patient page us, it would be a rather seamless operation.
