You must have a future appointment scheduled with Dr. Forster to receive a medication refill. If you do not, click here to request an appointment
How refills work in this practice
- I try to write all prescriptions, including refills, during my sessions with you. That way communication is clear and you get the best care.
- That means you need to be prepared when we have an appointment with how many pills you have and how many refills there are remaining for each prescription. Or, better, put that information in the pre-visit survey you fill out the day before our appointment. If you aren’t prepared you will be reminded once and if you still aren’t prepared you should expect to pay for the time it will take me to write for prescriptions outside of the visit.
- I don’t approve refills automatically or routinely. Refills between appointments should be the exception not the rule. If refills are approved between sessions they are approved for no more than 30 days.
- If a refill request is completely straightforward, not for a controlled substance, not urgent, and if you use the online form for refills, then it should be possible to approve a refill in 5 minutes or so – which means that I won’t charge for my time. Otherwise, you can expect to pay for the time it takes me to get all the information that I need and to submit approval to your pharmacy.
Refills that are not urgent
The best way to handle this situation is to request a refill from your pharmacy. If you don’t have any additional refills authorized by me, you may need to call the pharmacy and speak to a staff member, but they should be able to send me a request to approve more refills. This is the preferred way of getting a refill approved because the request from the pharmacy includes all of the information I need to review and approve the request efficiently.
- Since refills are never “routine,” please also send me an email explaining why you need me to approve the refill. If you don’t, it will delay approval of the refill. To make sure that I don’t have questions, you can use the Online Form for Refill .
- Please note that I do not approve refills for more than a 30-day supply outside of an appointment.
- I also will need to schedule a brief appointment to talk to you if the request is for a controlled substance.
Urgent Refills
If you will run out in the next day or two –
- Request a refill from your pharmacy AND
- Click the “Online” tool below and fill in the information there. That allows me to approve refills faster.
- Expect to pay for the time it takes me to handle this request.
Other Questions?
- Please use the tools below to contact us with any questions about your medications, side effects, drug interactions, insurance prior authorization issues, etc.
 | Online Form for Refill or Prior Authorization Issues Click on this link to request a refill if you need it urgently or for any other refill request that cannot be handled by just contacting your pharmacy. You can also use the link to let us know that you need us to fill out a prior authorization form to get your medication covered by your insurance company. |
| Online Form for Non-Refill Related Medication Issue Click on this link to submit a question about medications other than a refill request – for example, a question about a medication side effect or drug interaction. |
 | Phone |
Pharmacies are increasingly busy, and refill requests now come through on an automated schedule that makes no sense. Roughly half of all refill requests we get from pharmacies are for the wrong medication, at the wrong dose, or at a time when you don’t need a refill approved.
For that reason, I am now strongly encouraging all of my patients to turn off automatic refills and download and use the app for your pharmacy (Walgreens, Rite-Aid, CVS, and Alto all have one) to request refills.
For more about a new law in California regulating controlled substance refills and prescriptions, please read this blog post.