Prescriptions that looked overdue but weren't

The problem

Staff tracked prescription compliance with a manual date picker and a "mark compliant" button. When the list moved to the pharmacy system's feed, a new problem appeared: the feed almost never sends pickups and never sends reversals, so prescriptions that were reversed or picked up stayed open and looked overdue.

What was built

The dashboard receives prescription status updates from the pharmacy system as they happen, and a background job re-checks open fills every five minutes, filling in missing patient names and closing fills that were reversed, held or picked up. A compliance page lists every open prescription against its 14-day window, with in-app alerts and a daily text when anything is overdue. Staff can resolve what the system can't see, with a reason and a note.

What was hard

Trusting the right signal. Reversed fills vanish from the pharmacy system, so a "not found" answer is trusted only when the connection has just proven healthy. The pharmacy system also reuses the same prescription number when a fill is reversed and filled again, which made refills look overdue until the clock restarted per fill. And it marks prescriptions "Delivered" at its 6 PM day close, so that status can't be used as a pickup; a bag only closes on a real pickup signal or a staff confirmation.

Result

The cleanup cut prescriptions open past 14 days from 248 to 13, and all open prescriptions from 503 to 281. Since 11 September, 32 prescriptions had been reversed and filled again, producing 8 false alerts; when the per-fill clock went live, the overdue list went from 7 to 6.

Where the numbers come from

Build notes from September and October 2026.