Home Forums Discussions General Discussion handling prescription refills from the Pharmacy

In my area, whenever patients need routine med refills, their pharmacies fax us a request. This is outside of AC. So the staff have to go into AC and document the refill and then the staff have to fax the script request back to the pharmacy with my signature. I am told that my staff can legally refill routine meds using my NPI. How can this be set up in AC or new Crop so that staff can handle refills for non controlled substances. My Son in law is a state board of Pharmacy examiner and he says this can be done. How do the rest of you do this?

Contact AC to turn on the e-prescribe refills option so that the pharmacies can send you the refills electronically. In AC under account security, you can then designate one person in your office as the person who is allowed to do refills for you.

Shankar Santhanam, MD
Family Medicine
Lawrenceville, NJ
Clinical Advisory Board Member

Hi Tom,

Do what Dr. Santhanam suggests and that will help. Irregardless of having refill requests come in electronically, you will more than likely still receive refill requests via fax.

I do not fax refill requests back, I go into the chart, write scripts, send them and exit chart (without saving). The refills will be there in the history section of amazing charts.

And Tom... do you have Updox? I view the faxes there and eRx through AC. I actually find this process to be the quickest and most efficient, though I know others prefer what Shankar and Marty recommend.

After speaking with GA the renewals have to be done under provider sign in otherwise not counting for mu2 electronic prescribing

Thanks for the replies. No, Jon, I don't have or use updox. Never jump on board. Not opposed, just never subscribed.

As stated above you have to contact GA to have them make sure it is ready to go. Then you are on a fun journey of which box to click on to make the scripts match. I have figured it out as will your staff. The number of reasons to choose from when you turn down the script is voluminous. I just choose one.

In the PNG below you will see the place in the admin section to allow your MA to write the script for you.

I have spoken with a pharmacist who comes to my practice, and she stated that there is some reason for sending them via paper and not electronically. I basically send out a blast fax each year with my cell phone number, pager number and a message stating I will not refill faxes based on faxes rather than ePrescribe. It is also good to contact them to find out if they do not have ePrescribe. I don't know, I am not big on just refilling scripts without contact with the patient. That is one of the options that is on the refill window: Have patient contact the office.

Pharmacies are continuing to fax because it costs them approx 30 cents per eRx, both send & receive.

Is that really true? Are pharmacies paying 30 cents each way?
They make about $2 on a Medicaid prescription

I guess we should ask. I always thought it was either 10 cents or 25 cents. I recall the thread where everyone was talking about do they send another ePrescribe to cancel a script they sent to the wrong pharmacy. So, we will go with 30 cents. Now that pharmacy paid 60 cents for a script they never sold.