We fill the packs.
You keep the patient.

The College defines it as “a service one pharmacy provides to another where the central fill pharmacy processes a request from an originating pharmacy to prepare a drug order.”

In practice: you receive the prescription and do all the clinical work. You transmit an order to us. We prepare, package, label, check and record the packs and return them to you. You verify against the prescription and release to the patient.

You do. We do the technical work only, and you keep every obligation of the patient's pharmacy. The technical workload moves. Your obligations do not. You remain accountable to your patient, to the College and under statute exactly as before.

This is not an assignment, a novation or a transfer. Certain of your obligations may be non-delegable at law, and no agreement can change that.

No clinical function whatsoever. Specifically, we do not:

• assess the patient, or review the prescription for therapeutic appropriateness;
• decide whether a compliance aid suits the patient;
• obtain informed consent;
• alter, substitute, adapt, extend or renew any order;
• counsel, educate, monitor or follow up;
• perform the final release of the pack; or
• bill any patient or payer.

If we see a discrepancy, ambiguity or concern on the face of an order, we do not resolve it. We place the order on hold, notify you, and proceed only on your written direction.

Yes, subject to conditions. The main ones:

• both pharmacies hold a certificate of accreditation through OCP;
• the arrangement is governed by common ownership or a legally binding written agreement setting out services, roles, responsibilities and accountabilities;
• that agreement is signed by the owner and the designated manager of each pharmacy — and replaced within 7 days of a change of either;
• you obtain, document and maintain current informed consent that the prescription will be central-filled;
• both pharmacies keep records a minimum of 10 years; and
• both maintain a continuous quality assurance program and documented policies and procedures.

This is the point most often misunderstood, so plainly: packs are not labelled as though your pharmacy prepared them.

The policy requires the label to clearly show that the medication was prepared and packaged by a central fill pharmacy and not by the originating pharmacy, along with the date of preparation and packaging and a transaction or prescription number for cross-referencing.

Labels also carry what the compliance aids guideline requires — the legislated container markings, the dosing day and time, and a description of each medication including shape and colour. The label will also mention the medication is prepared for the originating pharmacy.

In practice, a patient on clonazepam, lorazepam, zopiclone or oxycodone has those packaged in-house by you and reconciled at dispense. We build that into our onboarding documentation, so it is clear how to train your team on managing these patients.

Health Canada's new Controlled Substances Regulations come into force on October 1, 2026, and state that central fill pharmacies may fill controlled substance prescriptions without a dealer's licence. The College's Central Fill Policy has not been revised to match. Until the College provides updated documentation and guidelines, we continue to treat these as excluded.

You need a lawful basis under PHIPA to share patient information with us. That is normally established in the written agreement between the two pharmacies, which sets out permitted uses, safeguards, audit rights, breach notification and what happens to the information when the term ends.

We use patient information only to perform the packaging service. Except for the logistics of physical delivery if you elect for direct provision of packs to patients, we do not communicate with your patient at all, and in no circumstances do we give them clinical, therapeutic or medication-related information.

• You receive the prescription, assess the patient, review for appropriateness, bill the insurance, decide the compliance aid is suitable and obtain informed consent.
• You transmit an order with the information set out in the service schedule, having screened it for excluded drugs.
• We accept or decline it, prepare and package it, perform and document an independent double check of product against order, and label it.
• We deliver to you with the production and label records, under conditions that maintain the required storage, with chain of custody and proof of delivery.
• You inspect on receipt, verify against the prescription, release the pack and counsel.

Standard production turnaround is measured in business days from the order cut-off, against fixed delivery days. Both are written into your service schedule, so they are a contractual commitment rather than a promise on a website.

If we miss a timeline, no fee is payable for that pack and any fee already paid is credited. You may produce or source it elsewhere and we reimburse your reasonable incremental cost up to an agreed cap. Sustained failure is grounds for termination for cause, with a written root-cause analysis and corrective action plan.

We ask for a rolling three-month volume forecast, updated monthly, so we can roster supervised pharmacist hours. It is non-binding and creates no minimum commitment.

Example: Pharmacy A has 50 patients evenly split on blister packs in 2 biweekly cycles, Cycle A billed on Monday of Week 1 and Cycle B billed on Monday of Week 2. In Week 1, Pharmacy A bills its cycle and sends the batch to Central Rx by 12pm. Central Rx provides a 48-hour turnaround on batches sent before 12pm, and the batch is produced with no issues and sent to Pharmacy A Wednesday afternoon. In Week 2, Cycle B is billed on Monday and sent to Central Rx by 12pm. An issue with a single patient causes the batch to be held. After the issue is resolved with Pharmacy A, Central Rx sends the batch out Wednesday afternoon, delivered Thursday morning.

We are accountable for the accuracy of preparation, packaging, labelling, processing and record keeping measured against the order as transmitted, and for the safety and integrity of the product until you receive it. Responsibility for product integrity passes to you on receipt.

Report any shortage, damage, discrepancy, medication incident, near miss or product complaint within the time set in the service schedule. We can identify, within one business day, every pack containing a specified lot and every patient and pharmacy affected.

We hold a written business continuity plan covering equipment failure, loss of premises, loss of pharmacist coverage and systems failure. It is tested annually and available to you on request. We notify you within four hours of any event expected to interrupt production beyond one cycle.

A flat technical packaging fee per pack.

You bill each prescription on cycle, claiming acquisition cost, any applicable mark-up and a single dispensing fee. No second dispensing fee and no mark-up is claimed by or on behalf of Central Rx. The fee is not linked to volume, to referrals, or to the value of anything you bill.

Both pharmacies, minimum 10 years. You keep your own prescription records; we keep production, label, equipment, storage and training records on our side. Production and label records come back to you with each delivery, and ours are available to you and to the College on request.

• A current certificate of accreditation.
• A signed central fill services agreement — owner and designated manager, both pharmacies.
• Notice to OCP that you are using central fill services, within 7 days of entering into or revising the agreement, on OCP's Central Fill Notification Form.
• A documented process for obtaining and maintaining patient consent to central fill.
• A way to transmit orders from your pharmacy system containing the required information, and to screen them for excluded drugs.
• Your quality assurance program and policies updated to cover the arrangement.

We walk you through each one. Most partners are producing within a few weeks of first contact.

It depends entirely on your current cost per pack, and we are committed to reviewing a cost analysis with you.

Here are some areas we expect you will save: HR hours for creating blister packs, consumables (blister cards and blisters), and valuable pharmacist time technically checking blister packs. Against that sits our flat per-pack fee.

That time saved can be turned into professional services, front-store retail and merchandising kept up to date by a pharmacy assistant, and any other service you wish you could do but can never find the time for.

We are happy to compare the two honestly for your volume, including the cases where keeping it in-house is the better answer for you.