Patent ID: 7765108
Filing Date: 2010-07-27
Classification: G16H

Abstract:
1. A method of managing drug prescription orders within a computer network of pharmacy resources of a corporate entity, the method comprising: receiving, into electronic queues corresponding to computers of pharmacy resources in the computer network of pharmacy resources of the corporate entity, prescription work orders for execution, wherein each prescription work order includes a physical preparation part and an information processing part, each pharmacy resource in the computer network of pharmacy resources is at a different physical location and includes at least one employee and a corresponding computer, each corresponding computer is configured to execute at least a portion of each queued prescription work order, and the computers of the pharmacy resources in the computer network are communicatively coupled to each other via a network server; calculating, at the network server in the computer network of pharmacy resources, a workload for each pharmacy resource, the workload based on an employee type of the at least one employee and the employee type selected from a group of employee types including a pharmacist, a pharmacy technician, and a clerk; determining, at the network server, a current workload distribution of the plurality of pharmacy resources based on the calculated workload of each pharmacy resource; designating, via the network server, a particular pharmacy resource as one of a sender or a receiver pharmacy resource based on the calculated workload of the pharmacy resource and the current workload distribution; automatically routing at least a portion of a particular prescription work order from a sender electronic queue corresponding to the first computer to at least one receiver electronic queue corresponding to at least one second computer corresponding to at least one designated receiver pharmacy resource based on the current work load distribution; fulfilling at least the portion of the particular prescription work order at the at least one designated receiver pharmacy resource and fulfilling a remainder portion of the particular prescription work order at the designated sender pharmacy resource; and delivering the fulfilled particular prescription work order to a desired physical location.