Patent ID: 7672859

Claim:
A method for tracking physical location of prescription orders through a pharmacy having a plurality of physically spaced apart locations for manually filling and storing the prescription orders, the plurality of spaced apart locations being positioned along a workflow stream leading to a storage area with an array of compartments for storing filled prescription orders therein, prescription orders being moved between the plurality of spaced apart locations by one or more pharmacy workers by hand, said method including the following steps: receiving plural prescription orders at a first location upstream of the storage area; operably securing a separate machine-readable tag to each prescription order upstream of said storage area, each said tag having a unique identifier that is readable by a tag reader in proximity to the tag regardless of its orientation relative to the tag reader; associating the unique identifier of each tag with customer information stored in a computer system in association with the prescription order; moving the prescription orders by hand to a second location within the pharmacy for manual filling upstream of the storage area, the second location having a second location tag reader in communication with the computer system; automatically detecting the presence of the prescription orders at the second location by reading the unique identifier of the remote tags with said second location tag reader regardless of the orientation of said tags and automatically recording at the computer system the location of the prescription orders at said second location for the manual filling; moving each of the prescription orders by hand to one of the compartments in the array of compartments as a filled prescription order, each compartment having a corresponding compartment tag reader that is in communication with the computer system and is operable to read the unique identifier of the tag on the filled prescription order regardless of the orientation of the tag, whereby the step of associating the unique identifier of each tag with customer information and the step of automatically detecting the presence of the prescription orders are performed by or under control of the computer system.