HHS – April 2002
PATIENT:  The privacy rule prevents a friend or family member from picking up prescriptions for me.  Now I’ll have to get out of my sick bed to get my medicine.
The Rule allows a pharmacist to use professional judgment and experience with common practice to make reasonable inferences of the patient’s best interest in allowing a person, other than the patient, to pick up a prescription.
FALSE !
FALSE!   The Rule allows a pharmacist to use professional judgment and experience with common practice to make reasonable inferences of the patient’s best interest in allowing a person, other than the patient, to pick up a prescription.

For example, the fact that a relative or friend arrives at a pharmacy and asks to pick up a specific prescription for an individual effectively verifies that he or she is involved in the individual's care, and the rule allows the pharmacist to give the filled prescription to the relative or friend.  The individual does not need to provide the pharmacist with the names of such persons in advance.