Our prescriptions are not clearing automatically

The prescription lifecycle is highly configurable by system administrators. Sometimes, due to a misconfiguration, prescriptions may not organically disappear from your user views even though they are considered "done".

Symptoms

Despite completing every activity in the sequence, the prescription remains on the user view/homepage, causing confusion and clutter. As a result staff may find themselves regularly clearing all prescriptions off at the end of the day - indeed we encounter lots of users who believe this is normal.

Given enough time the sheer number of prescriptions building up can even start to cause performance problems.

Causes

Hover over the progress button to determine what the prescription is waiting for you to do. In this example, the prescription is waiting for collection.

Either not all of the activities or tasks that have been configured for the prescription type are being completed, or (less likely) the user view is set up in a way that it shows completed prescriptions.

The task that is at the heart of the issue can be determined by looking at one of the prescriptions that is "stuck". The clearest indication is to look at what the green "progress" button is currently expecting.

Whether the task should be completed, or if the task is surplus to requirements and should be removed, is a discussion for pharmacy management, but both avenues are discussed below.

Solutions

First and foremost, understand that regularly clearing lots of prescriptions using the action bar is not considered ideal. If you find yourself doing this with the majority of your prescriptions, rather than a few "stragglers", then somewhere a mistake is being made.

1. Prescriptions are waiting for collection:
   1. Collect the prescriptions, or:
   2. In the prescription type's setup page, turn off "requires collection".
2. Prescriptions are waiting for delivery:
   1. Use the mobile app to deliver the prescriptions, or:
   2. In the prescription type's setup page, turn off "requires delivery".
3. Prescriptions are waiting for an activity:
   1. Record the activity, or:
   2. In the prescription type's setup page, remove the activity from the scanning sequence.
4. Prescriptions are waiting for "completion", "prescription complete", "final check complete" or similar:
   (These are the most common examples of instant activities set up by users to provide a firm stopping point to the end of the prescription lifecycle)
   1. Record the activity, or:
   2. Find the activity in the activities setup page, and make sure it is configured as an instant activity, or:
   3. In the prescription type's setup page, make sure the activity is at the end of the scanning sequence, or:
   4. In the prescription type's setup page, remove the activity from the scanning sequence.

If none of these examples apply, it's possible (though much less likely) that the user view has been incorrectly configured to return completed prescriptions. If you are sure that the prescriptions are not waiting for any further input, yet are still erroneously showing up, see the filters tab of the Setting Up User Views page to learn how to ensure the user views are set up correctly.