As flu season continues on campus, McKinley Health Center finds itself at the peak of busy season. Refilling prescriptions ahead of time, either by phone or online, is saving students time at the pharmacy, said Dr. David Lawrance, medical director at McKinley.

The online pharmacy debuted about four years ago, when MyMcKinley, which provides secure access to McKinley via the Internet, went live.

The cost to run the system is minimal, Lawrance said, explaining that in-house staff wrote the software, which saved money on licensing fees.

“It’s better that way because then you don’t have to wait when you go,” said Ashley Staff, senior in Business. “I’ve waited before, and it can take awhile if it’s crowded.”

Although the system is convenient for students and helps decrease staff time on the telephone, the system is not as fancy as it may seem.

“The pharmacists still have to take information from the reordering system and put it into their pharmacy management system manually,” Lawrance said. “We hope that someday that there will be a pharmacy management software upgrade that permits it to ‘talk’ with our software.”

Lawrance said difficulty can arise with the online refill system when a student orders a refill and their prescription as prescribed by their doctor has expired. There is no direct link between the reordering system and the pharmacy management system, so the reordering system can’t forewarn students that they no longer have a valid prescription in the pharmacy.

“This slows down the process, as the student will need to see or call their provider’s office for a new prescription,” Lawrance said. “It is easy for students to tell whether the pharmacy can provide a refill before they order. The bottom of the prescription label tells when it expires and how many refills are left.”

In Illinois, prescriptions are only valid for up to one year, Lawrance said. Pharmacists cannot provide more refills than what the provider ordered.

Lawrance was unsure to what degree other university pharmacies have implemented online ordering, but Walgreens, for example, has a system in place that sends e-mail refill reminders, faxes physicians when refills are depleted with a new prescription to sign and fax back and provides a list of medication and detailed information about each.

Lawrance said McKinley’s four pharmacists and primary technicians fill between 500 and 1,000 prescriptions a day, making it the busiest outpatient pharmacy in the county.

“If you come in to fill a prescription, it is filled while you wait,” he said. “Refill orders can be filled during quieter times of the day.”

Lawrance said this month is probably the busiest McKinley will be all year.

“Right now, everything is much busier than usual, as the campus has started to experience its annual influenza outbreak,” he said. “This brings even more patients to the pharmacy windows, though over-the-counter medications are all that are useful for influenza. The pharmacy can fill those a little faster.”