As has been mentioned, if you’ve never had to receive a partial, you’ve even been lucky, or you don’t get many scripts filled (or both). While we do normally have enough medication in stock to fill most normal prescriptions, there have been plenty of times I’ve had to partial an Rx, or not even have something in stock at all. However, for pretty much any medication, if we don’t have it, we can order it from our wholesaler and have it in stock the next day.
The computer system keeps track of our normal weekly, and 13 week, dispensing habits, and automatically orders enough of a drug to be able to supply most normal prescriptions. However, if you have something odd, or something that none of our regulars is on, or just a large amount of something, we might not have enough to fill it… Or sometimes we just have a run on something. I’ve run out of some things where even I go “How the heck can we be out of this?”.
I remember, on one of the last days of 1999, being sent by my wife to Walgreens to pick up a refill of a prescription for our dog (she had glaucoma, and we had to get her meds at a regular pharmacy). I have never, ever seen that kind of busyness at a pharmacy…many people were anxious to get their refills taken care of before 1/1/2000, in fear that the computers might crash and their prescription info would become unavailable. I do recall the pharmacist giving us less than a full refill on the prescription, and telling me that they were having to do that quite a bit, as they were suffering a lot of temporary shortages.
Thanks you for the honest and thoughtful response. I guess I have been lucky (as has my wife) that I have never had to get a partial, or be told that a pharmacist if completely out of something. I can now see how it happens, and it’s good to know that you can usually get something the next day from the supplier. The system works because pharmacys carry sufficient quantities of commonly dispensed drugs.
Occasionally, there will be a run on a particular drug because of a little something that’s going around, and the demand can’t be predicted from previous sales numbers. A couple of years ago, there was a particularly brutal bronchitis going around that caused some of the local pharmacies to run out of Z-packs. I had the option of waiting until the next day or having my doctor prescribe something else that the pharmacy did have in stock. I chose the latter. (Why these pharmacies didn’t just stock up on extra Z-packs when so many people had prescriptions for them is beyond me.)
We’re in Canada, but I can’t think the pharmacy system is too different from the US. My son’s on two medications that we have trouble with from the local pharmacies (both chain pharmacies, Walmart and Shoppers’, in a city of >100K people):
Vitamin K: It comes in liquid form that be administered orally or through an IV. Our pharmacy does not stock it, but can order it.
Citrulline: This is an amino acid. Oddly enough, places like GNC do carry it, but it’s apparently not pharmaceutical grade. We have to get this from the hospital pharmacy.
I’ve been to pharmacies many times and they had to order my medication. I’m I’m talking big Walgreens and common medicines. And when it comes to C-II meds (especially C-II opioids), count on them NOT having it and not being very keen on ordering it for you.
The only time I ever had a problem getting a prescription was when a dermatologist prescribed, not a commercial pharmaceutical, but a compounded one (for seborrheic dermatitis…it had something like sulfur and a handful of other ingredients). No one wanted to make it…they said they hadn’t compounded their own stuff for ages. So I just started buying T-Gel shampoo and using it both as shampoo and as facial cleanser.
I live in rural Thailand and it is surprisingly difficult to find even common drugs. There are dozens of pharmacies in our province but only a single one I can use to buy my meds (enalapril, simvastatin, etc.) (Hospitals are well-stocked but won’t sell even the simplest items, even lubricating eye drops, without seeing a doctor.)
In fact, the majority of rural pharmacies here sell neither aspirin nor Actifed (pseudoephedrine)! The reasons for the absence of these common drugs are different:
Aspirin is contraindicated for dengue hemorrhagic fever, a dangerous and relatively common infection here, so paracetamol is almost always substituted. (Of course, I need specifically aspirin for my heart condition.)
Pseudoephedrine is controlled by the government because it can be converted into some sort of methamphetamine. I don’t think government is worried about the tiny amounts a consumer would buy to deal with cold symptoms; they just don’t trust the rural pharmacies with the amounts they’d need to buy to stock it.
It’s actually similar in the US right now. A few years ago, most states started requiring registration and restricted purchases for even OTC drugs containing pseudoephedrine, because of their use in cooking meth.