What's up with Boots ?

AshfordSteve

Cornucopia wrote: »

What do you expect them to do that they could practically do?

I mean in terms of ordering their prescriptions. Lots of pharmacies will hold patient repeat slips and then either reorder when they think they are due or order when the patient contacts them. This puts a lot of pressure onto the pharmacy and it ends up with the pharmacy having to to sort out any issues such as prescriptions not coming back from the surgery or items being missed off by the surgery.

I do not do any of this - my patients need to order their items (which can be done in a number of ways), and if there are any issues such as the prescription not having arrived the patient contacts the surgery. We do collect prescriptions from our local surgeries, and we will sort out any clinical issues. I have friends who work for some of the large multiples who tell me that prescription ordering services are the bane of their life.

AshfordSteve

teddysmum wrote: »

I changed to the small Boots opposite my GP, after the small independent often failed to reorder my repeat prescription.


However, they aren't much better and sometimes are worse. They order items from the repeat list, which I haven't requested and last month, did me two months' supply , with two different prescribed dates,all in one pack, but with just one month's supply of a controlled drug, which would have been checked at the GP office.

This is an example of the problems described in my previous post. None of the issues about wrong items being ordered or not being ordered would happen if patients ordered their own prescription. This person can obviously use the internet, and the vast majority of services now have online prescription ordering services so you don't even need to get to the surgery to drop a repeat slip in.

teddysmum

AshfordSteve wrote: »

This is an example of the problems described in my previous post. None of the issues about wrong items being ordered or not being ordered would happen if patients ordered their own prescription. This person can obviously use the internet, and the vast majority of services now have online prescription ordering services so you don't even need to get to the surgery to drop a repeat slip in.

I am the person you are referring to, and , yes, I can order my own drugs via patient access. However, Boots offer the complete service (re-order and deliver), so I decided to trust them.


I choose the complete service as I can avoid visits to the pharmacy, where people with infectious diseases congregate in a small space and also, I am not always well enough to make the journey.

AshfordSteve

teddysmum wrote: »

I changed to the small Boots opposite my GP, after the small independent often failed to reorder my repeat prescription...

...Even worse, last year, they dispensed the wrong drug. Luckily just standard instead of enteric coated asprin , but this shouldn't happen when two people sign and check the packages.

The dispensing process is done by humans, and wherever you have humans involved errors will happen. Even if you have robotic dispensing, a human still has to generate the labels.

Dispensing is complicated by the fact that there are lots of products with similar names, similar strengths and in some cases identical packaging. There is also the fact that we know that the brain does not actually read all of the letters in the word - it looks at the start and the end and interpolates the middle, which explains why errors such as procyclidine 5mg tabs and prochlorperazine 5mg tabs happen. There is also a massive workload in many community pharmacies and staffing levels are not ideal.

The question for me is what is an acceptable dispensing error rate. Every pharmacist has made dispensing errors and any that claim not to are either a) lying; b) have been a pharmacist for a very short period of time; or c) are locums who work in a different pharmacy every day and have not been informed about any errors they were responsible for that came back later.

If a dispenser and a pharmacist both have a 99% accuracy rate, that would give an error rate of 1 in 10,000 items (1/100 x 1/100). I think lots of industries would be delighted with that kind of accuracy in a process where humans have put the stock away on the shelves, generated the labels, taken the stock off of the shelves and checked it. Given that there are approx. 1 billion items dispensed in community pharmacies in England per year, a 1 in 10,000 error rate would cause 100,000 errors per year. This sounds a lot, but many of these errors will be quantity errors or the wrong form being given (tabs instead of caps for example). The reason you see stories in newspapers from time to time about dispensing errors is because ones that harm patients are thankfully rare.

One way of reducing errors further would be to introduce scanners, so that the barcodes on the packaging can be scanned to verify it is the correct product. This would require investment from the NHS though, as it would slow down the dispensing process, and would work best if we had original pack dispensing.

KxMx

AshfordSteve wrote: »

This is an example of the problems described in my previous post. None of the issues about wrong items being ordered or not being ordered would happen if patients ordered their own prescription. This person can obviously use the internet, and the vast majority of services now have online prescription ordering services so you don't even need to get to the surgery to drop a repeat slip in.

When I used the Boots service they'd ask me to tick what I wanted next month, and give me a date to collect.

They still managed to not fill them by the day after due, or 3 weeks early, and once somehow ordered a duplicate- in June they showed me an unfilled prescription dated April, and I know i'd had what i'd ordered that month.

Online they (Boots- my GP surgery does not offer this) require 2 weeks to fill the request, this is not suitable for most of my medication which is taken as needed not on a regular basis, and after the problems with advance ordering frankly I do not trust them.

I've gone back to ticking what I want and dropping it in store. I then phone them a week later to chase if I haven't had a text saying it's ready in the meantime.

FabApocalypse

I thought it was only my local branch!

The last few months it's been dreadful. I have a couple of lifelong medical issues resulting in frequent prescriptions. Very rarely do I get everything in one visit, there's always something short or a whole item owing.

On one occasion it took them forty minutes to dispense my prescription - that's not forty minutes waiting to be served, though that happens too, but forty minutes to hand over four boxes of pre-packed tablets once they had the script.

I once watched while a staff member carefully cut two tablets off a strip in a box, reverently placed those two tablets in the original box and back into stock, took out a Boots-branded box and put the remaining 26 tablets and patient information leaflet in it. She had assumed the box contained 30 tablets and on seeing the prescription for 28, acted accordingly. It originally contained the 28 I needed. When I pointed out what had been done she didn't understand and another member of staff had to back me up though the contents were clearly printed.

I've also waited for drugs to come in which have been there all the time; when a generic is prescribed (as they so often are), I've been told they have to be ordered in and to come back another time when the branded drug is in stock. Really people dispensing drugs ought to know the equivalent brand/generic names when necessary.

The pharmacist at my nearest branch disappears 'upstairs' for great lengths of time during which no prescriptions can be handed over; people have to wait for ages or call back again. No explanations are given. I have a feeling the job is being combined with general shop management duties but this isn't in the best interests of either the customers or the store.

They never seem to have enough staff either; at times the only till staffed is the one at the pharmacy counter. Shelves go unstocked and I dread to think what their shoplifting bill is!

No way would I trust them with my repeats.

50Twuncle

Boots have had their last chance at getting my prescription right
I ordered 5 different drugs on line through my GP - gave Boots 6 days and went to collect them, yesteday
They had 2 ready - and insisted that that was all that they had ("Go and see your GP"
My GP is a 20 mile round trip - but I went all the same - only to confirm that the prescriptions had all been sent 6 days ago - so back to Boots - only to discover that they had ALL been filled - just not all in the right pigeon hole
GOODBYE BOOTS - can't say that it was fun !!

kdogg_05

Is it the same pharmacy manager / pharmacist that you've always had?

Generally a pharmacy is only as good as it's pharmacist / manager, although with bigger companies, they sometimes don't make things easy.

With something like socks though, it should never take that long. Often socks aren't ordered from the usual suppliers, and it involves calling a company, or faxing through an order form for special sized socks. This means it often gets overlooked, and not ordered. So it sounds like poor management more than anything I'm afraid.

Having said that. . . .when I worked in Pharmacy, I never enjoyed working for boots. Often they would make people wait 30-45 minutes for prescriptions, even though it wasn't busy. Have generally found smaller independent chains a little more responsive, and helpful. (Although the same applies, that they will only be as good as their operator)

MariaJP

I no longer use Boots prescription service. I found it very unreliable, slow and dispensing my prescriptions in parts because they did not have medication in stock or not the prescribed quantity. Once they dispensed a drug incorrectly giving me 200mg tablets instead of 100mg as prescribed by doctor. Fortunately, my eagle-eyed medical student son noticed, so no harm was done and a young pharmacist apologised for her error. For the past 18 months I have been using Kamsons, an independent chemist, who are absolutely excellent.

Did you know that "Boots Opticians" are no more Boots Opticians, and there is nothing to inform of this as one walks into a Boots store:eek:? Boots Plc have sold the optical business franchise and have no control over franchisees' practice. I have recently been ripped off by Boots Opticians Crawley who charged me £160.00 for reglazing my quality, favourite frame with a single lens prescription. See my Boots Opticians thread in the "Praise, Vent, Warnings" forum.

teddysmum

After my last delivery, I rang Boots to leave out two drugs of which I have ample supply and the lady appeared to be amending while I was on the phone.


Last week I rang to say that my Tramadol dose had been doubled and that my GPs' database had been amended so they could request the larger amount,but checking online, yesterday, the Tramadol is fine, but the cancelled drugs have been reinstated.


My Boots branch openly encourages repeat prescriptions held by them and prefers that patients don't order their own drugs via patient Access.