Pharmacy Tech
Just as all Pharmacy Technicians come in different shapes and sizes, so do the vast employment opportunities for a Pharmacy Technician. I will tell you the most interesting place I ever worked was a mail order pharmacy. I was a Pharmacy Technician and all that was required in my state to obtain that title was a clean background check and a wiliness to work.
In a mail order pharmacy things are quite different for a Pharmacy Technician. They have several different departments and each consist of Pharmacists and Pharmacist Technicians. The duties of a Pharmacy Technician was broken down into several steps and handled by many people.
The first contact would be with a Pharmacy Technician when a new prescription was received by mail or fax. The technician would review the prescription and enter it into the system. The document was then tagged with a number and scanned into the system for all employees to see. The hard copy was filed away.
After it was entered into the system ideally it would be reviewed by a pharmacist for accuracy and then sent to Tech to fill it. After being verified by the Pharmacists it would then be mailed out to the patient. Sound easy? It was easy on those few occasions that it was that simple. On many occasions there would be a problem with the prescription, such as we cannot read the doctors writing or the doctor did not sign it. For either of there reasons the patient would be called by yet another Tech to advise them what information was needed.
There are several challenges to deal with in mail order pharmacies and almost all of them are handled by the techs before going to pharmacists. on occasion we would not receive payment and would have to call the patient for a form of payment. Sometimes we may have an allergy on file and need to confirm they are able to take the medication.
The Tech also handles a "reship request". These are cases that patients have called into the pharmacy when they have not received there medication after it was mailed out. A lot of times the bottles would break in shipment or there are even cases of the wrong medication being sent out. In these cases the Tech would research and reship the medication.
The technicians role in the mail order pharmacy is broken down in to so many little steps that if there is a problem with the prescription it could be held up for days or even weeks. There is an 800 number staffed by Pharmacy Technicians that do nothing but answer calls concerning questions on orders, These Pharmacy Techs become almost like a patient representative in the fact that they are the only voice the patient has within the pharmacy.
Once a prescription was ready to fill it goes to a warehouse that has a machine that would count and fill most of our drugs. The Pharmacy Techs in that area would do nothing but put a lid and label on the bottle and send it to shipping. Once in the shipping department another Tech would mail the package to the appropriate address. There were some medicines that required refrigeration and those would be packed in ice and over nighted to the patients.
In a mail order pharmacy your prescription may be handled by 8-10 different pharmacy Technicians before a pharmacist ever sees the medication. Each technician has one and only one distinct duty in the filling process. This sometimes made things more complicated than steam lined. Parting out the position also did not allow a Pharmacy Tech to experience all aspects of the Technichains job. When working as a Tech in a "Combined effort" it was very important to check the work of the person behind you. It could be very tedious and time consuming.
