From script pad to the pharmacy’s hands.
TrueRoute does not choose a pharmacy and does not dispense. It computes who is eligible, validates the clinic’s pick against the same gates, records the whole thing, and transmits — by machine or by hand.
The five moves
The pad is the complete legal artifact. There is no chart behind it, so it carries every element a valid prescription requires and freezes them at signature.
- 01 · Patient
Full legal name, date of birth, sex, residential address and phone — captured on the pad, not assumed from a chart that does not exist.
- 02 · Product
A specific SKU, with its unit of measure spelled out — “priced per mL, enter mL” — so the quantity is unambiguous. TrueRoute multiplies by the verified rate; it does not convert a dose for you.
- 03 · Pharmacy
Your eligible list, each with the order total beside it. You pick. There is no default and no auto-selection.
- 04 · Review and sign
An explicit attestation, timestamped and tied to the prescriber, frozen into an immutable snapshot. That snapshot — not a later reconstruction — is what the pharmacy receives.
- 05 · Charge and transmit
The gates re-run server-side. The card is charged the sum of the ledger lines, and the order is transmitted by API adapter or placed by a named person at the ops desk.
The nine gates, in order
Nine gates run in order and stop at the first failure, so the record says why — “lost on ship-to state” is a different fact from “your organization has not enabled that pharmacy” and from “they do not carry that SKU.” Every candidate’s per-gate outcome is recorded. The server re-runs all of them at signature and again at send: an ineligible pick is refused with a reason, never silently re-routed.
- 0Controlled substanceProduct-level and absolute: refused before any pharmacy is considered, because no choice of pharmacy could bring a controlled substance into scope for us.
- 1Provider licenseThe prescriber holds an active license in the patient’s shipping state.
- 2Clinic entitlementThe parent organization has enabled this pharmacy for this clinic. Access is opt-in; a missing row is “no.”
- 3Practice enrollmentThe clinic is on file at that pharmacy as an active account.
- 4Prescriber enrollmentThe clinic’s prescriber is on file there, under their own NPI and state license.
- 5Facility typeOffice-use may go only to a 503B; patient-specific may go to either.
- 6Ship-to stateThe pharmacy can ship to the patient’s state.
- 7Product carried and pricedThe pharmacy carries the selected SKU, it is orderable, and there is a price for the quantity asked for.
- 8Transport readyA transport route exists and is configured, so the order can physically leave the building — checked before the card is charged, not discovered after.
We tell your patient what we can actually prove.
When a pharmacy reports a shipment — by webhook, or because a named person on our ops desk entered the tracking number — TrueRoute emails the patient and, only with prior express consent on file, texts them. The clinic’s admin contact gets a copy.
Example SMS to the patient — consent-gated
Your order from Bayside Wellness has shipped. Tracking (UPS): 1Z999AA10123456784
No medication name, dose, strength or SKU — the template has no parameter for one. Sent only if prior express consent is recorded, re-checked on every send.
Example email to the patient
Subject: Your order from Bayside Wellness has shippedYour order from Bayside Wellness is on its way. Carrier: UPS Tracking number: 1Z999AA10123456784 Track your order: <signed link> If you did not expect this, contact your clinic.
The subject line follows the same rule as the SMS: it renders on a lock screen, so it carries no medication detail either.
Four different states. Four different words.
“Shipped,” “the carrier has it,” “the message provider took it” and “your patient received it” are four separate facts, and most software says the first one and means the fourth. We label each one as what it is, and we do not claim the one we cannot observe.
- Shipment recorded A pharmacy webhook or a named ops-desk staffer entered a carrier and a tracking number against the order. This is the event that fires the messages. We record this
- Carrier acceptance The carrier’s own scan, on the carrier’s own page. The patient’s status page links out to it rather than restating it as though it were ours. We link to it
- Message provider accepted Our email or SMS provider took custody and returned a reference, which we store. A failed send is recorded as failed; a channel that is not configured is recorded as not sent, never as success. We record this
- Recipient delivery Whether the message reached the person. TrueRoute does not process delivery receipts, so it does not have this fact — and a provider accepting a message is custody, not delivery. We will not say “delivered” about something we did not observe. We do not claim this
A status page, not a portal
The link in the message is signed, expires, and opens one page: received, verifying, compounding, final verification, shipped, delivered — the ladder as the pharmacy reported it, plus the carrier and tracking number. No medication, no price, no patient record, no login. An expired or invalid link and an order that does not exist render the same page, so the link cannot be used to probe for one.
No two-way chat, and no promises about the middle
These messages are one-way notifications; replying STOP opts the patient out and flips the consent record in our own system, not just the carrier’s. There is no patient portal and no patient chat. The clinical relationship is the clinic’s, and it stays there — we do not offer to answer for you, and we do not promise a message at every stage we have not demonstrated.
What we deliberately do not build
Stating the boundaries is the point. A platform that does not make the dispensing decision is not in the dispensing decision.
No auto-routing
TrueRoute never picks the pharmacy and never routes to the cheapest option. The clinic chooses; we validate the choice and record why it was valid.
No controlled substances
Non-controlled only. No DEA workflow, no EPCS — out of scope by design, and gate 0 refuses them before anything else runs.
No patient portal
One-way shipment notifications and a signed, logistics-only status page. No patient login, no chat, no clinical content.
See the console for yourself.
The fastest way to understand it is to write one script in it.