By Adam Hammer, staff writer

Having a prescription refilled can now be done with the click of a mouse.Albert Lea Medical Center went live with online pharmacy refills available on its Web site at www.almedcenter.org on Aug. 15. The service allows customers to have their prescriptions refilled and ready to be picked up or delivered without having to leave their homes.

&8220;With the number of people in front of computer monitors nowadays, it&8217;s going to be a convenience,&8221; Leo Held, outpatient pharmacy manager, said. &8220;It&8217;s gotten to the point where each bit of automation has made things faster, more efficient and I think safer.&8221;

The online program will not only serve as a convenience to many pharmacy clients, but will help pharmacists fill prescriptions with fewer distractions.

&8220;No answering the phone, no interpretation of what was actually said, and there&8217;s not a lot of chit-chat. We can get right to the point,&8221; Held said. &8220;The point is they want a prescription refilled and this is the prescription they need.&8221;

For customers who visit the pharmacy in person, the online service will allow pharmacists to spend more time with customers and less time answering telephones.

&8220;On an individual prescription, it&8217;ll be filled just as quickly as it was before. The difference might be that the pharmacist&8217;s time is freed up from talking on the telephone to get to filling the prescription,&8221; Held said.

Another benefit of the service, Held said, is that less information will be lost in translation because it will come direct from the customer order form.

Orders can be placed from any Internet connection, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The process takes customers through a total of nine pages to order a refill. The first page also offers the option to transfer a prescription to the ALMC pharmacy.

When an online order comes in to the pharmacy computer, a Beethoven tune plays and someone has to respond to the order before the music will stop.

Delivery options include ready for pick-up, mail delivery or ALMC courier delivery. Online pharmacy refills are free of charge, unless a customer chooses to have a prescription mailed. Basic shipping charges are $1.

Customers can enter a credit card number to pay for shipping and cost of the prescription on the Web site.

For orders to be picked up at ALMC, customers can request a time for pick up between their normal hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The ALMC pharmacy delivers within city limits free of charge for one delivery of prescription items per day. The times for delivery must be between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. when their courier is making its regular scheduled deliveries to area nursing homes.

If customers want their prescriptions any other time of the day or under any other circumstances, arrangements can be made to have a cab driver deliver the order and charge the customer cab fair.

&8220;There is an option for people who just can&8217;t get out and need it right now and can&8217;t wait for our delivery courier,&8221; Held said.

The program was piloted for six weeks starting June 1 on ALMC&8217;s intranet with about 200 clinic employee users. During the trial, the system operated without a flaw, Held said.

The online ordering service operates on a secure system that was updated with adequate firewalls during the trial period to be able to protect patient and clinic information when it went public.

&8220;We are very excited about this new prospect,&8221; Jennifer Friehe, ALMC outpatient pharmacist, said. &8220;Hopefully customers will find it easier and more convenient.&8221;