The theory is that if you regularly get your prescription filled at your local Walgreens, the doctor can call ahead with your prescription and when you arrive you can grab it and go with no wait. Unfortunately, often times they call it in to the incorrect pharmacy, then the person arrives and the medication isn’t ready. Then phone calls have to be made, blah blah blah. I always ask for mine to be written out to save the hassle.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone for whom the call it through practice has actually worked. Every time someone’s mentioned it, here and on other boards/blogs they’ve always mentioned how the doc has called the wrong pharmacy, or left incomplete instructions, or faxed through someone else’s details or etc. etc.
Seems like so much more hassle than it’s worth.
Okay. I’ve never had a doctor call the order to the wrong pharmacy. My pharmacy uses a 24-hour phone-in line for renewals; this work great except sometimes when the prescription has no refills and I’ve waited until pretty close to when I need it and the doctor isn’t in that day. I’ve never had to wait longer than 20 minutes for a prescription that I’ve handed to my present pharmacy, unless when I got back there was a line. I’ve had other problems (most associated with new personnel) such as receiving the wrong medication or nobody in the pharmacy being able to find the filled scrip that they all agree was filled but not picked up, but there are fewer of those problems than I have experienced at other points in the process, like having the correct lab slip at the lab, HIPAA being adhered to in the office, and most recently a friend’s vial of blood being–oops!–left by a tech on top of a cabinet over the weekend.
I will share one experience I had with Eckerd’s (now taken over by CVS.)
Ivylad was in some serious pain. (This was long before he had the morphine pump implanted.) They were able to partially fill his prescription that night, enough to get him through the night, and I went bright and early the next morning to get the rest of his medication.
No one else was in the pharmacy area. There were three workers back there. One of them realized he needed some cash, so he decided to buy some gum with his ATM card so he could pull out some extra money.
For some reason, he couldn’t get the debit scanner to work, so the cashier and the third worker decided to help him. Meanwhile, I’m standing there while they’re all joking about the malfunctioning debit scanner.
I finally snapped, told them my husband was in a great deal of pain and if it wasn’t too much trouble I’d appreciate it if someone could get his prescription. One of them slunk off and got his pills.
YMMV, and I know you don’t work that way, ladyfoxfyre. But OMG, what a bunch of complete assholes.
First of all, that was hilarious. I was a pharmacy tech for five years, and it was dead on.
If you can still find one, try an independent store or a small local chain. I hate going to a large chain pharmacy. There’s a small local chain near us that we like. The nearest store knows who we are and what’s going on in our lives, and even which vitamins we take. So if I call and say, “Himself is coming to pick up a prescription. Please give him a bottle of his multivitamins, too, because I forgot to tell him that,” they say, “Okay! Thanks, Stuff!” and the right pills come home in the bag. God love 'em.
Seriously, that is really lame. I never ever do personal stuff at work (like buying gum to get cash) unless there is another person there who can take care of customers in case something like that happens. I think that boils down purely to shitty work ethic.
I think that a lot of pharmacy horror stories boil down to exactly that. Unfortunately when people need to pick up prescriptions or are sick at the doctor, they get even more fed up with bad service than they would at the 7-11. It’s one thing when the fast food clerk is rude or wasting your time, but when you’re sick or in pain you just want to get the fuck OUT of there. People who don’t take that need of the customer seriously don’t have any business in pharmacy or anywhere in heath care, IMHO. When I trained people in retail and hospital pharmacy work I always taught that they should work with the thought that it’s their own person they love waiting for the drug. Be efficient, be accurate, and be aware that they deserve fast, competent service.
As I said earlier, if someone isn’t getting that from their pharmacy, it’s time to go elsewhere.
I have never had a 'script called into the wrong pharmacy, because the doctor’s office asks me for the number! If I give them the wrong number, that’s on me. But I don’t.
I go to the pharmacy in my Costco. Aside from a couple of serious malfunctions (one with a feverish baby with a low pulse-ox and I was on the verge of freaking out), they are great. Fast (and they are busy, believe it), accurate, friendly and helpful.
Last time I refilled my birth control, I asked the guy working the front desk if that was my last refill. he said yes, it was, but if I called him a day or two before I wanted the next one, he would call my doctor & get the refills authorized. :eek: Really? Thanks! 
I see a lot of my pharmacy, because I have kids and they seem to come down with something every month during the school year.
If your pharmacy sucks, find another one. Vote with your feet and your wallet.
So, I used to get prescriptions filled at the local CVS. On one occasion, I had a question regarding a possible interaction between an OTC drug and my prescription drug–which I take because of a little mental health issue.
The pharmacist was unpacking boxes and wouldn’t turn around to talk to me. I had to shout to make myself heard. I asked him to turn around and come closer. He said “It’s okay, I can hear you.” Well, fine, but I don’t want to be shouting my psychiatric problems all over the store! I couldn’t believe how insensitive he was.
I switched to another pharmacy, where the service is good and the pharmacist is great.
And then, a year or so later…I walked into my shrink’s office, and guess who was sitting there in the waiting area? You guessed it! Jerkwad pharmacist!
I’ve always wondered whether he was under psychiatric care at the time of my little incident with him, or whether he developed mental health issues afterwards. I prefer to believe the latter. Karma’s a bitch, eh?
Righto. That’s exactly it. I’ve got a superiority complex, you see, and that’s why I’d like my prescription in less than 24 hours. See here’s the deal, if I bring in ANY other prescription (where they have to count little pills), it will be ready in 15-20 minutes every time (even if it’s a brand spanking new thing). But my REFILL (ie, there is no calling to the doctor) on my pre-sorted, pre-packaged birth control takes 24 hours from me popping in- even though it’s sitting on the counter right there just out of reach.
So yeah, I think me expecting my easier medication to be ready in the same amount of time as the more complicated things is totally be pretending I’m the Empress of the Universe. So, kindly, if you could throw some free goats in with the birth control too, that’d be great. Otherwise I’ll smite you mightily or something.
All you who only have to wait a couple of hours, maybe? Consider yourselves lucky.
When you turn in a prescription at Cook County Hospital (ok, Stroger, if you must) Fantus Clinic, which is separate from the hospital itself, they tell you to come back in several DAYS! And it doesn’t matter if it’s for pain or blood pressure or what. If I turn in a scrip on Wednesday, I generally plan to pick it up the next Tuesday. It didn’t used to be so bad but they keep cutting down on employees and hours (the clinic pharmacy now closes at 7pm on weekdays and is closed on weekends) that the time keeps lengthening. Luckily they now have Refills By Mail which I use, but if I’m out of refills or the doctor changes a dose or adds something, I have to go to the window, and then come back the next week.
It’s worked for me several times. I give the doc the number of the Walgreen’s that we patronize, someone calls in the script, and I’m good to go. I also have had very good experiences with the automated phone refill service. Since I take over a dozen pills a day, plus I have to use an inhaler, and I have insulin and syringes that I need on a daily basis, I have a lot of maintenance prescriptions. It’s very rare that I DON’T get my prescriptions filled when promised. The pharmacy is very busy, but it seems to be efficient. Oh, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the drive-through service.
This might have already been done, but here’s a quick story about how it worked for me.
I went to have my teeth cut out in Athens, Ohio - about two and a half hours from my house - and my wife was driving me back home that day. Before they even started, they asked where I wanted my prescription called in to, and I quickly thought about it and said “well, the CVS in my hometown is fine…” then I told her not to do that. We figured out time-wise where we should be (at a minimum) and took a huge risk - I told the girl “Jackson has a Kroger’s pharmacy, about halfway between. It should be okay to call it in there.” She looked at me as if I was crazy, wanting it called into a place where I had no other business, instead of the one near my house. Truth was, I dislike the CVS here, and couldn’t think of another pharmacy nearby. She called it in, and I showed up. I spent less than 10 minutes at the pharmacy counter and maybe 3 minutes after in the store altogether. It worked great - back in the car and my wife and I left! Hasn’t happened since though…
Brendon Small
In the case of retail pharmacy, you can also blame the dipshit managers who don’t understand that pharmacists and techs are trained professionals. They are not cashiers and stock clerks, and when he worked in retail pharmacy, my father had words with more than a few of these “managers” for pulling his techs to stock shelves or to work a non-pharmacy register when the pharmacy was busy.
Robin
Well the whole “Just slap a fucking label on it and hand it over” mentality isn’t exactly “I’d just like to have it within 24 hours,” now is it? It’s “I want this in 5 minutes or less because that’s how long it should take you to prepare it for me”.
Now I can only speak for my own pharmacy, and my own work ethic, and my own experiences, so if you’ve had a shitty pharmacy or a shitty experience I’m sorry. The “way it works” is that you call in and tell us when you’d prefer to pick it up, and your order goes into a computer queue organized by time. If you call me and say “Hey, I’m really running late, is there any way I can sotp by in like 20 minuts and get my prescription?” I have no problem finding you and pulling your order from the queue so it can be filled early. But if you tell us you’d like to pick it up at 5pm and show up at 11:20 am and say “Oh sorry I know I said 5, but I thought I’d stop by anyway just to see if it’s ready…” and we have to scramble around to fix it up, you’re the asshole. 
But I may be slightly pissed still over the bitch who inturrupted my dealings with not one, but two customers who were asking private questions about their condition, to squawk at me from the register “EXCUSE ME, I AM IN A HURRY HERE, I AM HERE TO PICK UP MY MEDICATION!” And when I said, politely, "I’ll be with you in a minute, ma’am, I am dealing with a patient right now, she responded, “YEAH I KNOW, BUT I AM IN A HURRY!” Fantastic, bitch, but this guy just got out of the hospital and is currently more deserving of my attention, so kindly bug off and maybe next time you should do better scheduling.
Oh, and here’s another tip for having prescriptions phoned in:
To ensure the least amount of time spent in the pharmacy, have it phoned in somewhere you have an active profile. Or call the store ahead to give them the information before you have it called in. I cannot tell you how many people have prescriptions phoned in to my store where they have never filled a prescription anywhere in the chain, and come to pick it up expecting that we have pulled your insurance information, address, allergies, and cell phone number out of thin air to have it ready for you when you get here.
Then scoff and bitch when we have to scramble to put it all through in 2 minutes on top of the other stuff we were already doing.
Just sayin’
I said that? Whoa, my memory must be going rapidly at my old decrepit age of 21.
Pharmacists are stretched out and that’s probably where the bottleneck occured. I have stood around like that because I couldn’t do anymore until the pharmacist verified it. I entered your script in, I grabbed the drugs, weighed it, labeled it and passed it to the pharmacist. Nothing leaves until the pharmacist checks it. I literally cannot sell it to you because the register will not ring it up until the pharmacist scans it as verified from their unique console. Pharmacist usually have multiple people waiting for them on the phones. Customers with questions, doctors with call backs for refills, trying to verify shitty doctor handwriting, etc… While they are doing that they can’t verify. Which means everyone waits, including the techs.
Jesus christ, quit being intentionally obtuse. It’s unbecoming of you. Understand that I wasn’t quoting you, hence the lack of usage of a quote tag. I was speaking to a general mentality that is relatively common in the industry. In fact, I was responding to “What about an asthma inhaler? Take the box off the shelf. Put the box in my bag. No mixing, no counting. I’ll pay you for it.” orignally from AHoosierMama when somehow in your mind you must have transposed her name for yours and chose to attack me as though I was claiming that what you said was ridiculous. What you originally said wasn’t ridiculous, but the whole “You’re right, I have a god complex and I need goats with my prescription” shit was.
So if you’d like to discuss the matter, I’m fine with it. But stop pretending like I’m accusing you personally of something when I’m not. And goats are on aisle 11.
So if I’m following this properly, Diosabellisima is complaining to ladyfoxfyre about the annoying things that pharmacists (excluding ladyfoxfyre) do, and ladyfoxfyre is complaining back to Diosa about the annoying things that customers (excluding Diosa) do.
If only we could get an asshole pharmacist and a dipshit customer in here and let them argue, it would probably be a lot more fruitful.