I pit the pharmacy, or the doctor's office... I can't figure out which.

The BBQ Pit
1

I have a special expensive medication that I need to have on hand. I won’t die without it, at least not in the short term, but there are times when I need it to prevent getting sick as hell. Because it’s an injectable I’m required by my insurance to have it shipped from a particular mail order pharmacy. The good part is that I receive the medicine and the syringes free of charge.

Last Tuesday I noticed that I only had 4 days worth of ampules left (depending on how many times I had to use it). I have had to use it pretty regularly recently, so I called the pharmacy to order my refill. They informed me that I had no refills left but that they would contact the doctor’s office to get it refilled and I would get it Friday.

This has happened many times before and there’s never a problem. My understanding is that they fax the request to the Doctor’s office and a response is faxed back the next day. Once they have it they can overnight the medication to me.

Thursday the pharmacy called me and said that they had received a response from the Doctor’s office but it didn’t include all of the necessary information (they hadn’t been told the dose). Therefore I wouldn’t get the medicine on Friday but once they had the response they would schedule it so that I would receive it on Monday. At this point I was mildly miffed that they hadn’t called me about this sooner. I told them that I knew the dose and also that they should have records of it from my previous refills. They said that they need to hear it from the doctor’s office.

Friday afternoon around 4:30 they called to tell me that they had not yet received a call from the doctor’s office and would not be able to schedule it for Monday. I tried to call the doctor’s office but got their answering service.

This morning I called the Doctor’s office to inquire about this. They said that they had responded 3 times with all of the necessary information and are not going to waste their time by pursuing it further. I gave them the 800 number and extension for the pharmacy and persuaded them to try again.

I also called the pharmacy and spoke to them about it and told them that the doctor’s office said that they had responded 3 times with all necessary info. The woman at the pharmacy said she could find no record of any response but that sometimes doctor’s call back and leave messages in the wrong voicemail box. She said that she would investigate that possibility and would call the doctor’s office again.

So now I’m sitting here waiting to hear back to find out whether or not I’m going to receive this necessary medication. I have the insurance to pay for it, and I have the prescription (sort of…) but these damned people can’t get their damned red tape untangled or something.

Where do I start.

The Goddamned MotherFucking pharmacy should have called me sooner if they were having difficulty getting the correct information from the doctors office!

The Goddamned doctor’s office should have contacted me and informed me that they were having difficulty communicating with the freaking pharmacy. And they shouldn’t just give up in trying to help a patient receive a necessary medication! And the woman I talked to at the doctor’s office shouldn’t get angry with a patient who is simply trying to get his medication! I’m fucking sorry if I’m an inconvenience. I don’t control the damned pharmacy and I have no choice but to use that pharmacy (I do have a choice but it would mean paying hundreds of dollars a month out of pocket). I do have a choice of physicians and I’m strongly considering exercising that choice.

As for now, if I have to I can call my specialist and see if he can take care of the prescription.

Lately it seems as if my whole life is being messed with by people who can’t seem to do their jobs properly. If you saw my thread on the phone company you’ll know what I’m talking about.

2

We must have the same Doctor, nearly everytime I need to fill a prescrition the pharmacy needs to get in touch with him because he’s left some information off the script.

3

I also have other medication that I can purchase at my local pharmacy. When the refills run out it always seems to take the Doctor’s office two or three days to contact that pharmacy with a new prescription. I don’t know whether to blame the Doctor or his office personnel. It may simply be that they have more work than they can handle, but the waiting room is never full and there always seem to be 2 or three women behind the desk handling things. I’ve learned to request new prescriptions for the local pharmacy 4 or 5 days early just to be sure to get it in time. I tried to do that with the injectable but I guess I’m going to have to try to order that 1 or 2 weeks early.

4

I just received a call from the Nurse (I recognized her voice) at the Doctor’s office. My Doctor is not in the office today and she needed to find out the dose so she could call the pharmacy herself to take care of it. I told her the dose and she said she would call them.

I don’t understand why they couldn’t just look in my chart, but they still use paper charts so I suppose it was easier to just call me than to go through all of the pages in my chart to find the previous dose.

This Nurse has worked in that office for years and she’s competent and pleasant so I think she’ll get this straightened out.

One thing I don’t understand. If they contacted the pharmacy 3 times with “all necessary information” didn’t they look up the dose then, and don’t they have a record of those calls?

5

Time for a new doctor. Find one that considers insuring your continued good health not to be a waste of time.

6

You’re right and I’ve already made the decision to do that.

7

I waited about an hour and then called the pharmacy at 4:30 to confirm that everything was straightened out. I managed to get a manager on the phone. I now have his direct number. He said that they had heard nothing more from the Doctor’s office. :mad: He even went and asked each of the pharmacists. He said that there was no way he could even make an educated guess on how to fill it as it was written. I take the medicine twice a day when it’s needed, but it was written as every 6 hours. He said that all he needed was a simple call from the doctor’s office saying that they should fill it exactly as in the past.

After speaking with him I tried to call my Doctor again. I got the answering service. The medicine is actually for a GI problem so I then tried to call my Gastroenterologist to see if he would write a script for it. He’s the one who originally prescribed it for me. I also got his answering service.

So it looks like I’m out of luck for another day, as my supply dwindles. Tomorrow morning I’m calling my GI Doc to ask him to write the script. I’ll give him the direct number of the manager who said that he’d be willing to talk to him.

Once I assure that the medicine is on the way, I’m finding a new GP.

This is fucking ridiculous. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

8

It’s beyond ridiculous. Do any of your docs have an emergency, on call number? Perhaps another doctor could contact the pharmacy.

9

I used the on call service Friday after I found out the pharmacy hadn’t heard from them. The doctor on call said that there was nothing that could be done till Monday morning. I’m calling my GI Doc tomorrow and asking him to contact the Pharmacy. He’s definitely competent so that should settle the problem for now. Then I’m finding a different GP. This is bordering on malpractice.

If this was truly life threatening I’d head straight to the emergency room. So far I’m in no real danger but I could face some major inconvenience and suffering. I may have to go out and buy a bunch of baby food or something else easy to digest. :mad:

10

I suspect that if you were to become seriously ill as a result of having no meds it *would *be malpractice. IANAL.

I hope you intend to tell the GP exactly why his services are no longer required.

11

It sounds like it probably is a screwup on the doctor’s part here - or at the very least, they’re severely lax about following up - but I’ve been on the doctor’s office end when we had to call the pharmacy three times to get a prescription refilled. I work in the research end of things so I don’t typically do the calling-in, but after a prescription wasn’t refilled the first time through the doctor’s office proper, the patient called me since he knows I tend to get stuff done. I asked a tech that very day to call it in, and I know she’s reliable, so I was puzzled when I got a second call from the frustrated patient. The tech was confused too, so I stood next to her as she called in the prescription (both so I could tell the patient that I heard the call, as well as so she could say that I’d witnessed her making the refill call), picking the “speak to the pharmacy staff” option rather than the “leave a message” option. (The latter is typically preferred since you don’t have to wait on hold.) I also apologized to the patient and assured him that I was sure it had been done before, and didn’t know what happened.

We certainly wouldn’t have said that we’re giving up on dealing with the pharmacy, and I think it was unprofessional of them to say that.

12

It’s also unprofessional to not be able to get the instructions to the pharmacy straight after nearly a week of trying. It’s also unprofessional to have to call me, the patient, to ask what the dosage is. It’s also unprofessional to then tell me they’ll call and take care of it and then not follow through. I’m afraid they’ve used up their chances with me.

13

Oh definitely. That was just the one that jumped out at me. If a doctor’s office leaves a refill message - that’s all filled out properly - you don’t get a confirmation, so in our case we never knew that it wasn’t getting through somehow. So in our case, we really did need the patient to let us know there was a problem, but at least it “only” took 3 calls. Frankly I have no idea what the problem was since it was the biggest pharmacy chain in the area and their pharmacy phone tree is pretty much the same regardless of location, but whatever - your doctor’s office should have insisted on speaking to a person much sooner.

Wild-ass guesses about why you were called for a dosage (though they really shouldn’t have): Maybe the doctor made a note about discussing changing a dose but then didn’t discuss it or didn’t make the change, and the doctor was unavailable to clarify. I know when I was calling in refills at a previous job, I asked patients to read off the dosage information when they called our office, just to cross-check with the chart and confirm they were getting the right dose - but again, that doesn’t sound like the situation here.

14

I’d normally give them a pass on calling me about the dosage. I’ve dealt with this problem for years and probably know better than the doctor how best to deal with it on a daily basis. He generally seems to realize that and asks me what I need and gives it to me (within reason, of course, and there are no controlled substances involved). But they supposedly had already called the pharmacy 3 times with the information. How did they do that if they didn’t know the dosage?

15

Why, oh, why, do we allow doctors to handwrite prescriptions anymore? It would take a decent programmer all of a day or two to come up with a prescription program that required the necessary steps of medicine name, dosage, and instructions and linked to the PDR for reference. Patients would no longer be at risk for confusion over similar medicine names, missing dosages, or nonsensical instructions.

It’s such a stupid problem, it has such bullshit consequences, and there is an easy fix. Why can’t we insist, either through force of law or professional practic, that all doctors do this?

16

I see two doctors these days. One faxes the prescription straight from her laptop in the examining room to the pharmacy, and the other prints out the prescriptions so they’re legible and contain all necessary information. I agree, phouka, that all doctors should be required to at least print prescriptions, if not send them directly electronically – it’s not like it’s a difficult thing to do.

When you change doctors, davidm, write a letter to your doctor explaining why you’ve left him. We had a problem with a doctor’s staff, and when we left and I wrote a letter detailing the problem, I got a call back from the doctor himself who was entirely unaware of the situation and totally horrified it had happened. Unfortunately, he was the junior guy on the staff and the head guy refused to do anything about the problem staff member, so we left as planned. But your doctor may also be unaware of what happened, and needs to know how his staff treated you. Because that is just inexcusable.

17

Mama Tiger,
I’d rather not dig up the past here but this isn’t the first instance of this office failing miserably in their communications with a third party. It’s also not the first instance of them taking longer than is reasonable to renew a prescription, although it is the worst. That could be the fault of the office staff but I’ve seen similar problems for years and the office staff has changed over that time. The only constants have been the two doctors who are currently there.

The doctor who wrote the prescription is apparently at least partly to blame for this incident as he seems to have written a partly unintelligible prescription that contains incorrect dosage information. That in itself is enough to make me want to look elsewhere.

I’ve rationalized the past problems because I’ve been trying to avoid the major step of finding a new physician to handle my chronic issues. But the camels back has broken and I’ve decided that for my own health and safety I have to find someone else.

I already have a doctor in mind. He used to work in the office I go to and I saw him two or three times when my regular physician was not in. He struck me as very competent and I’ve heard very good things about him. He was able to successfully diagnose and treat a friend’s wife after numerous other doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. He left that office several years ago and is in another office in the area. I’m planning to call to see if he’s accepting new patients.

18

One of the things I like about my new doctor is that he enters my prescriptions into a computer database, and then prints out prescriptions for me. I get clear, readable prescriptions, and he has a clear record of what he’s prescribed. My old doctor used to handwrite prescriptions, and I always wondered how on Earth the pharmacists could decipher her scribbles.

19

See if you can get your records sent over. I was going to say you should do it before you leave, but typically doctors charge a copying fee to give the records to patients but send them for free to other doctors. Plus if you’re leaving I suspect the priority on this job will drop to the bottom, but another doctor bothering them will probably be better attended to.

20

This kind of shit happens far too often. I hate them! If it isn’t my MIL, it’s my dad or me or some stranger on an internet message board. What the fuck is so hard about wanting to get the info the first time and do right by the customer? Fuck 'em all.