What happens to the authorized refills when a prescription is adapted?

The pharmacist takes responsibility for the adapted prescription as well as the authorized refills. The pharmacist could choose to provide an initial adaptation of the prescription but reduce or eliminate the authorized refills. If they did this they would need to provide the rationale for their decision in their documentation and inform the patient that they will need to return to their physician earlier than intended (note: a pharmacist cannot add refills that were not initially authorized by the prescriber). Whatever the final decision is, it must be properly documented and provided in the notification to the prescriber.

If the pharmacist adapts the prescription and maintains the authorized refills, when the patient returns for a refill the pharmacist would process the refill as they would any other refill prescription. The processing of a refill of an adapted prescription is not considered an adaptation per se, so the documentation and notification requirements of PPP-58 do not apply.

Should the patient return to the pharmacy for a refill and a different pharmacist is on duty that pharmacist would again process the refill as they would any other refill, keeping it under the adapting pharmacists ID. If they have a concern about the appropriateness of the adapted prescription they should do what they normally do if they have a concern about refilling a prescription; refuse to fill, provide an emergency fill if necessary and in this case either refer the patient back to the adapting pharmacist or to the original prescriber.

Finally it is important to note that when a pharmacist adapts a prescription and maintains the authorized refills they must inform the patient that as a result of them doing this the prescription is now non-transferable which means the patient will need to return to this specific pharmacy in order to get their refills.