What is a Part-Fill Prescription?

To create a part-fill prescription, the prescriber writes the total prescribed pill amount and then states how much of the prescription can be filled at a time, with an interval noted. This is not the same as a refill as the pharmacist works off the original prescription until the total pill amount has been dispensed. Part-fills are legal for narcotics whereas repeats or refills are not.

The interval could be X number of days or X number of weeks. Either way, the pharmacist will only dispense the next part of the prescription once the stated time period (interval) has passed. 

Prescribers are encouraged to include an expiry date on the prescription, to prevent it from being misused in the future. The specifics of the expiry date will vary from surgery to surgery and are up to the discretion of the prescriber.

If a patient feels the need for additional tabs once the part-fill prescription has been completely dispensed, the patient needs to request a refill.

Prescribers who chose to use a part-fill prescription should make sure to explain to their patients how a part-fill prescription functions and note that each fill must be obtained from the same pharmacy that received the original prescription and that each fill will incur a dispensing fee.

How Does a Part-Fill Prescription Look?

Why Should a Prescriber Use a Part-Fill Prescription?

Patients often use far less pain medication than prescribed. These leftover pills then find themselves languishing in medicine cabinets and are sometimes misused. But prescribing too few pills can lead to inadequate pain management, requests for refills and even visits to the ER.

Part-fill prescriptions can be a solution to this dilemma. They are especially applicable to surgeries that are known to have a relatively wide range of best practice opioid tab quantities (for example, 25-50 tabs), a situation often seen in orthopaedic, spinal and neurosurgeries.

By using a part-fill prescription, the patient starts off with receiving the lower end of this range but has the ability to access additional pills in a controlled way that minimizes the chance of ending up with unneeded pills. Using a part-fill prescription may also reduce the need for a refill prescription.