andillformthehead

Nicker had a good response, but here is someones attempt at humour in explaining it... I cant remember who to give credit to (maybe www.theangrypharmacist.com) i'm not sure:

For over a year and a half now, the first thing anyone visiting my little blog garden has seen under the headline at the top of the page is the promise that the question of “why does my prescription take so damn long to fill” will be answered. Tonight I looked over this blogs archives and realized it was a promise not kept. While many topics have been covered here, and you have been provided with ample evidence of how drugstore workday life does indeed warp the mind, the question of why it took 2 hours for you to get 20 Vicodin has remained unanswered. I can’t help but to think there may be someone out there who has been logging on every day for the last 18 months hoping in vain for this mystery to be solved. Should such a person exist, I offer my humble apologies. To everyone else, I offer the following prescription scenario:

You come to the counter, I am on the phone with a drunk dude who wants the phone number to the grocery store next door. After I instruct him on the virtues of 411, you tell me your doctor was to phone in your prescription to me Your Doctor hasn’t, and you’re unwilling to wait until he does Being in a generous mood, I call you doctors office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk, who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we’ve ever filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that “for you” means “for your cousin” and you answer my question with a “yes”, whereupon I go to the computer and see you are not on file.

The phone rings.

You have left to do something very important, such as browse through the monster truck magazines, and do not hear the three PA announcements requesting that you return to the pharmacy. You return eventually, expecting to pick up the finished prescription…..

The phone rings.

…….only to find out that I need to ask your address, phone number, date of birth, if you have any allergies and insurance coverage. You tell me you’re allergic to codeine. Since the prescription is for Vicodin I ask you what codeine did to you when you took it. You say it made your stomach hurt and I roll my eyes and write down “ no known allergies” You tell me……

The phone rings.

……you have insurance and spend the next 5 minutes looking for your card. You give up and expect me to be able to file your claim anyway. I call my competitor and am immediately put on hold. Upon reaching a human, I ask them what insurance they have on file for you. I get the information and file your claim, which is rejected because you changed jobs 6 months ago. An asshole barges his way to the counter to ask where the bread is.

The phone rings.

I inform you that the insurance the other pharmacy has on file for you isn’t working. You produce a card in under 10 seconds that you seemed to be unable to find before. What you were really doing was hoping your old insurance would still work because it had a lower copay. Your new card prominently displays the logo of Nebraska Blue Cross, and although Nebraska Blue cross does in face handle millions of prescription claims every day, for the group you belong to, the claim should go to a company called Caremark, whose logo is nowhere on the card.

The phone rings.

A lady comes to the counter wanting to know why the cherry flavored antacid works better than the lemon cream flavored antacid. What probably happened is that she had a milder case of heartburn when she took the cherry flavored brand, as they both use the exact same ingredient in the same strength. She will not be satisfies though until I confirm her belief that the cherry flavored brand is the superior product. I file your claim with Caremark, who reject it because you had a 30 day supply of Vicodin filled 15 days ago at another pharmacy. You swear to me on your mother’s….

The phone rings.

……..life that you did not have a Vicodin prescription filled recently. I called Caremark and am immediately placed on hold. The most beautiful woman on the planet walks buy and notices not a thing. She has never talked to a pharmacist and never will. Upon reaching a human at Caremark, I am informed that the Vicodin prescription was indeed filled at another of my competitors. When I tell you this, you say you got hydrocodone there, not Vicodin. Another little part of me dies.

The phone rings.

It turns out that a few days after your doctor wrote your last prescription, he told you to take it more frequently, meaning that what Caremark thought was a 30-day supply is indeed a 15 day supply with the new instruction. I call your docotr’s office to confirm this and am immediately placed on hold. I call Caremark to get an override and am immediately placed on hold. My laser printer has a paper jam. It’s time for my tech to go to lunch. Caremark issues the override and your claim goes through. Your insurance saves you 85 cents off the regular price of the prescription.

The phone rings.

At the cash register you sign….

The phone rings.

…….the acknowledgement that you received a copy of my HIPAA policy and that I offered the required OBRA counseling for the new prescriptions. You remark that you’re glad that your last pharmacist told you you shouldn’t take over the counter Tylenol along with the Vicodin, and that the acetaminophen you’re taking instead seems to be working pretty well. I break the news to you that Tylenol is simply a brand name for acetaminophen and you don’t believe me. You fumble around for 2 minutes looking for your checkbook and spend another 2 minutes making a check for four dollars and sixty seven cents. You ask why the tablets look different than those you got at the other pharmacy. I explain that they are from a different manufacturer. Tomorrow you’ll be back to tell me they don’t work as well.

Now Imagine this wasn’t you at all, but the person who dropped off their prescription three people ahead of you, and you’ll start to have an idea why…..your prescription takes so damn long to fill.

good question, and I'm not sure I will do a thorough job explaining my opinion here, but I will try... and I'm sure this will spark a good thought provoking discussion so maybe someone can change my opinion.

I don't think anyone should be forced to do something they dont want to, be it because of religious reasons or other. So, if a pharmacist doesn't want to dispense a medication, be it because or religious reasons, medical reasons, or what-have-you, they shouldn't. HOWEVER, I also don't believe that they should then be protected in their job. If my employer wants to carry Plan B and wants it dispensed, and I refuse, they should have every right to fire my ass right there.

If I own the pharmacy, and I decide I don't want to carry a medication or provide a service, no one should try and make me either. I know the discussion gets emotionally charged when we start talking reproductive rights... but there are plenty of examples of other medications we don't carry for various reasons, and noone should be able to make me carry it.

Disclaimer: While I may have used the term "I" in the previous paragraphs, that doesn't necessarily reflect my personal beliefs about said drug. Its just easier to type that way. I don't own the pharmacy I work at, and in fact I float between pharmacies, so I don't have much control over whether or not the pharmacy has it.

None o

For the most part, it is rare that I ever tell someone to avoid something generic. There are a few instances where people seem to react differently to generics that I am a little more cautious with. The biggest would be converting someone from brand Coumadin to generic warfarin. However, if they are a new patient and have never been on either brand or generic... go for the generic.

Also, be sure that the generic drug is actually AB rated for the brand. This is the case 99% of the time, but occasionally you see a generic come out that hasnt yet met that rating. An example of this would be when venlafexine ER tabs came out, some people were using them in place of the Effexor XR caps... which they shouldn't have been.

Long winded for my first response. I'm sure there have been other instances, but thats what came to my mind.

Rarely. There are a few things that give me the chills still... like when I see meds come through for worms, or for scabies.... oooh scabies... i just want to throw the med from a distance :) But usually we are pretty immune to it.

However... I have worked close to my hometown before and have seen some girls from high school get the whore's coctail, which is Valtrex and birthcontrol together... always makes me happy i dodged a bullet there.

Constantly! It is a much more common occurence than I would have thought before being out and working. After while you become good at spotting those people, and you know what you are in for.

My favorites are the people who try and make you feel bad for "accusing" them of being drug seekers, and they have legitimate pain... until you present the evidence of their behaviors to them. Its too bad, because some people really are in need of those medications and at times seekers can give everyone a bad name.