Dispatch

Pharmacy delivery dispatch and service levels

Getting the right deliveries onto the right routes, in time for the deadlines that matter, and knowing within minutes when one of them will not make it. This is the dispatch side of NoazRX: the ready queue, driver assignment, route plans with per-stop ETAs, and what happens when a delivery does not complete.

What pharmacy delivery management covers

Pharmacy delivery management is the operational side of delivery: deciding which deliveries go out today, who takes them, in what order, and what happens to the ones that cannot be completed. It sits between entering a delivery and proving it was delivered, and it is where most missed deadlines are either caught or created.

In NoazRX it is one part of the same pharmacy delivery software that handles order entry, the driver app and proof of delivery, so a dispatch decision and the record it produces never live in two different systems.

The loop

The dispatch loop, from ready to closed

Ready

The pharmacy marks deliveries ready once they are packed. That is the moment drivers are told there is work to collect, not before.

Assigned

Drivers accept work from the ready queue. A courier team’s dispatchers can also assign deliveries to a driver and transfer them between drivers when a route changes.

Routed

Stops are ordered by the route optimizer, or by a route plan the pharmacy has already locked, with work for another day kept off today’s route.

Watched

Driver positions and delivery statuses update live on the dashboard map, and patients can follow their own delivery through live delivery tracking.

Closed

Every delivery ends delivered, or not delivered with a reason and a tracked return. Nothing is left in an “attempted” state that nobody owns.

Route plans

Route plans, ETAs and deadlines

Where route planning is switched on, the pharmacy can split the day’s deliveries into routes before a driver arrives. Each stop gets an ETA, and every delivery with a deadline is marked as met, at risk or late against that ETA — so the problem shows up at the planning desk, while there is still time to move a stop, rather than on a doorstep after the deadline has passed.

Once a plan is right, the pharmacy submits it and the stop order is locked for the driver. Without a plan, the driver’s app orders the stops with the route optimizer, starting and ending where the driver chooses.

  • Split the day into routes and see an ETA for every stop
  • Filter and sort deliveries by deadline
  • See which deadlines are met, at risk or late before the route leaves
  • Lock the stop order the pharmacy wants driven
Scheduling

Same-day, next-day and recurring deliveries

Same-day by default

A new delivery is for today unless someone says otherwise, which is what a pharmacy handing over a prescription usually means.

Next-day and future dates

Deliveries promised for another day stay off today’s route. When one needs to go early, “move to today” brings it forward without changing what the patient was promised.

Recurring deliveries

Regular deliveries, such as a monthly blister pack, repeat from a template instead of being re-entered every cycle.

Urgent work

Deliveries tagged Urgent are visible as such to everyone who handles them, and deadlines travel with the delivery into the route plan.

How service levels are designed around a route, rather than promised in the abstract, is set out in service levels.

Exceptions

When a delivery does not complete

Every programme has deliveries that fail. The difference is whether the remainder is documented or simply retried.

A reason, not a status

The driver records why the delivery could not be completed, and the package’s return to the pharmacy is tracked until it is handed back.

A new attempt with a real date

A reattempt is scheduled for an actual date and, where text messages are on, the patient is told that date — a message saying “rescheduled” without saying when only produces a phone call to the pharmacy.

Recalled by the pharmacy

When the pharmacy calls a package back before it reaches the door, it is recorded as a return to the pharmacy, not as a failed attempt against the patient.

What a complete failed-delivery record contains is covered in delivery exception documentation.

Courier companies

For courier companies serving several pharmacies

A courier company can dispatch for many pharmacies from one screen, with its own drivers and dispatchers. Settings are made per pharmacy — whether patients get text messages, whether labels are printed, whether route planning, long-term care mode or temperature monitoring are on — so each pharmacy gets the programme it signed up for. Deliveries are invoiced per delivery, priced by zone or postal area, and driver pay is worked out from the same records.

Reporting

Reporting on how dispatch went

Search and filter every delivery, see key figures, export to Excel, and pull a proof-of-delivery PDF for any stop. Compliance review adds rule-based findings and driver and pharmacy scorecards, so a pattern of late or undocumented deliveries is visible across a month rather than buried in one bad day.

Pharmacy delivery dispatch questions

Can we run same-day and scheduled deliveries together?

Yes. Deliveries are same-day by default, can be set for the next day or a later date, and stay off today’s route until their day — or until someone moves them to today.

Can the pharmacy decide the stop order?

Where route planning is switched on, yes: the pharmacy builds the routes, sees an ETA and deadline status for each stop, and submits them with the order locked for the driver.

What happens when nobody is home?

The driver records a reason, the package is tracked back to the pharmacy, and a new attempt can be scheduled for a specific date that the patient is told about.

Can a courier company use NoazRX for several pharmacies?

Yes. A courier company dispatches across all of its pharmacies from one screen, with settings, invoicing and driver pay handled per pharmacy.

See your own delivery day in NoazRX

Bring a typical day’s deliveries, your deadlines and how you handle a missed one today, and we will walk through it in the dispatch view.