Welcome to Release #6, Prescription Batching (and more)!
Patients are constantly inundated with messages and phone calls from their provider’s office—EMR portal messages, voicemails, and text messages. Managing message fatigue is a core component of delivering a better pharmacy experience, so we introduced a seamless way to batch together several prescriptions, ensuring patients are no longer receiving individual messages for each medication.
In many ways, prescription batching is table stakes for any pharmacy workflow (for starters, you wouldn’t want to ship multiple medications in separate packages), but designing a workflow that is seamless and easily adapts to pick-up, mail order, and courier delivery was important for our Covered Entity partners and their patients.
And, as always, we managed to sneak in a number of other customer-requested features to improve the overall experience for pharmacy teams and patients.
Release #6 Highlights =>
✅ Create a New Batch
✅ Modifying a Batch
✅ Manually Send Mail Signature Collection Link
✅ Shipping Out-of-State Configurations
✅ Support for Rx Remarks/Comments
Creating a New Batch
When a patient has multiple prescriptions, our platform by default assumes the pharmacist will create a batch. Think of a batch as a group of prescriptions that are taken through the dispensation process as a unit, with all messaging and workflow steps handled at the unit level.
For example, patients are messaged about the batch as a whole versus each individual prescription. Pharmacists can create a shipping label for the entire batch, rather than individual prescriptions, and a shipping consent signature is collected for the entire batch at once.
A pharmacy team member has the ability to choose which medications to include in a batch, as well as view other medications on file they may want to fill at the same time. Patients are only notified that their prescriptions are ready once the pharmacist has processed at least one batch.
Modifying a Batch
In the real world, there are many reasons why a pharmacist may need to modify a batch. The most common is that a new prescription arrives on file, or an existing prescription can now be adjudicated, filled, and added to the original batch. A pharmacy team member can modify a batch with just a few simple clicks.
Once a batch has been modified (for any reason), we’ve decided to pause all automated messaging for that batch going forward. It can be confusing for patients to receive multiple messages about signing a shipping consent form without understanding the context behind different groups of medications. From this point forward, the pharmacy team member will manually message the patient to let them know what to expect.
The only exception to this rule is shipment tracking URLs—if multiple batches are created and shipped separately, the Alchemy platform will continue to send the patient individual tracking links for each shipment.
We designed automated messaging as a tool to assist pharmacy teams and provide a seamless experience for patients. However, in this case, giving pharmacists full control after a batch modification was the right balance, rather than trying to interpret the reason behind each modification.
Manually Send Mail Signature Collection Link
As part of batch editing, you can now manually send a signature collection link to the patient by clicking on the three dots in the top right of a Waiting for Pick up banner and then selecting the Send Mail Signature Link option.
Auto Refill Consent
Depending on state level requirements *i.e. Colorado has specific rules around opt-in vs. opt-out language), Covered Entities can now configure their opt-in defaults and customize the exact messaging in accordance with their state requirements.
Patients that have opted out of Auto Refill will now receive an automated message (when utilization has reached roughly 70%) that asks whether or not the patient would like their upcoming prescriptions filled.
Shipping Out-of-State Configurations
By default, pharmacies will no longer be able to ship packages out of state in order to stay adherent with PBM requirements.If you attempt to do so, the Print Shipping Label button will become disabled and an error message will appear in the bottom-right of your screen.
New Rx Remarks/Comments
Rx Remarks (BestRx) and Rx Informational Comments (PioneerRx) that are saved in BestRx and PioneerRx are now visible in the Prescription Details tab by clicking on a record in the Fill History table on the Patient Profile page.
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