# Can drug orders continue indefinitely until explicitly stopped?

**URL:** <https://talk.openmrs.org/t/can-drug-orders-continue-indefinitely-until-explicitly-stopped/3492>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [November 2, 2015, 6:24am UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/can-drug-orders-continue-indefinitely-until-explicitly-stopped/3492 "2015-11-02T06:24:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![darius](https://talk.openmrs.org/user_avatar/talk.openmrs.org/darius/32/8082_2.png) [@darius](https://talk.openmrs.org/u/darius)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/can-drug-orders-continue-indefinitely-until-explicitly-stopped/3492/7 "2015-11-10T01:52:53Z")

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> [@vsingh](#):
>
> I am assuming that is agreed that duration should not be mandatory.

Correct. If the code is requiring this, it’s a bug.

> [@vsingh](#):
>
> So Burke, you are suggesting that we populate total quantity with 0 for such cases? Thanks

Burke just went on vacation for 2 weeks, so I’ll answer as best I can:

The quantity and numRefills are details that the ordering doctor communicates to the pharmacy that is going to fulfill the order, so that the pharmacy knows how many pills to give the patient.

In the DOTS scenario the patient is not going to pick up this prescription at the pharmacy, so it is appropriate to store these as quantity=0 (and hide this in the application).

* * *

For later: generally I think this argues for dropping the validation that we require quantity for all outpatient orders, unless @burke wants to argue that outpatient DOT therapy is a separate care setting or something like that.

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