Is half an hour too long to wait for your prescription? Ontario review board says it is not

An Ontario pharmacist will face no further action after a patient complained about waiting approximately 30 minutes for his prescriptions.The Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) recently upheld an Ontario College of Pharmacists’ (OCP) decision in favour of Toronto pharmacist Emad Fayed, after a patient argued the amount of time he was made to wait for his prescriptions was “decidedly unprofessional.”The complaint dates back to July 2025, when the patient went to a Shoppers Drug Mart in Etobicoke in significant pain. He was told his medications would take about 30 minutes to prepare.Pharmacy records show it took Fayed 27 minutes, from 5:38 p.m. to 6:05 p.m., to fill the three prescriptions.According to HPARB’s filing, Fayed said the roughly 30-minute estimate reflected the work involved in safely filling three prescriptions, including “retrieving the controlled medication from the time-delayed safe, which requires a brief, mandatory wait,” double-counting it and completing a final pharmacist check.OCP’s complaints committee found that waiting was reasonable and pushed back on the idea that filling a prescription should be immediate.“The Committee underlined that dispensing medication is not an automatic activity whereby pharmacists simply rubber stamp prescriptions,” reads the board’s filing. Rather, the committee said pharmacists need time to prepare and check prescriptions and make sure medications are appropriate for each patient.Fayed acknowledged that those steps may not be obvious to someone waiting at the counter, particularly when they are already uncomfortable.“The Committee noted the Respondent’s acknowledgment in his response that, without understanding the behind-the-scenes steps involved in dispensing, the waiting process might seem unnecessary or even discouraging, especially while experiencing pain,” reads the filing. The patient’s complaint went beyond his own experience. He argued that 30-minute waits were common across pharmacies, were often unnecessary and failed to put patients’ interests first. He also alleged that keeping people waiting could encourage them to spend more money in the store. HPARB said those broader concerns about pharmacy practices were outside the scope of an individual complaint review.During the review, the patient said he had named the wrong Shoppers Drug Mart in his complaint and meant to identify another Etobicoke location. HPARB said it could not consider the new information and upheld OCP’s decision to take no further action.

Is half an hour too long to wait for your prescription? Ontario review board says it is not

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