Prescription Processing, Dispensing, and Recordkeeping
Valid prescription elements
A prescription must be issued for a legitimate medical purpose by a practitioner acting in the usual course of professional practice. Required elements include patient identity, drug name, strength, dosage form, quantity, directions, date, and prescriber identification. Arizona permits electronic prescriptions and, within limits, oral and faxed prescriptions depending on the drug schedule and setting.
Verification duties
The pharmacist has a non-delegable duty to verify authenticity and clinical appropriateness. Red flags - distance between patient and prescriber, cash payment for high-risk drugs, pattern prescribing, altered documents, requests to avoid counseling - require resolution before dispensing. "The pharmacist called and the prescriber's office confirmed" is the standard resolution; documenting that call is the second half of the answer.
Refills, transfers, and substitutions
Refills may not exceed the prescriber's authorization or the statutory maximum for the schedule. Transfers between pharmacies are permitted with required information transmitted and recorded; controlled-substance transfers have schedule-specific limits and one-time rules. Generic substitution is permitted unless the prescriber indicates "dispense as written" or the patient refuses; the patient must be informed of the substitution.
Records
Prescriptions are retained for the period set by rule and must be readily retrievable. Records must show what was dispensed, by whom, when, and what was verified. Inventory, compounding logs, and counseling documentation round out the record set.
Traps
Assuming a refill may be added without prescriber authorization; assuming any pharmacy may transfer any controlled substance any number of times; assuming the technician's data entry satisfies pharmacist verification. None of these is true.
Rule of thumb
Trace every prescription through four gates: validity, verification, authorization limits, documentation. A question that skips a gate is testing whether you notice the skip.
Worked example
A patient asks to move a prescription to a closer pharmacy. The receiving pharmacist must obtain and record the required transfer information, and the transferring pharmacy must document the transfer; the prescription's remaining refills and any schedule-specific limits govern what may move.