I am seriously pissed off at the pharmacy I get my meds from, but not for me.
THey gave me the wrong Byetta self inject. So now some poor guy who is just starting Byetta has MY meds, which are 10 mcg, instead of the proper dosage which is HALF that.
I really hope he takes a look at the dosage before shooting up or he is in for a hell of an unpleasant morning of nausea and the mild possibility of wonky issues keeping the proper level of glucose.
I find this out at 6 am when the store is closed. I tried directory assistance to see if he was listed so I could at least warn him, but no luck. Since my company is one of their vendors, I used my specialist info to leave a direct VM in the store managers voicemail box because I know it will get listened to immediately [it is the corporate box, not the generic call in voicemail] but the instant the store opens at 8am I am going to be on the phone with them.
I can deal with not using my byetta until I can get it replaced, but what if they gave him someones insulin or something else that would do real harm… :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
I was given a wrong prescription by Walgreen’s once. It wasn’t even supposed to go to me at all, they just put my name on it! I caught it and took it back. They apologized, but I still was pissed off. The pharmacist got written up.
I would hope so. That’s a pretty serious violation.
Years ago a GF got a prescription for a diaphram. What she ended up getting was a prescription for heart medication for a 70-some year old man with the same first initial and last name. One can only imagine the expression on his face upon opening up a package containing a pink box…
This is one of the few times where I won’t even try to defend the pharmacist in question. The responsibility is his or hers to determine that every prescription leaving the building is intended for the ultimate recipient. He/she deserves to be written up for this, and I hope no lasting harm occurs from this mess up.
I was given the wrong form of my prescription once. Had an eye infection, and the doc ordered antibiotic eye drops. Got home with my meds and was really, really thankful that I read the box and not just the directions from the label that the pharmacy slaps on the product. They had given me the ear drops formula rather than the one for the eyes.
It was frustrating, because as the day had passed, my vision was not so good and my eyes hurt like crazy. Of course, this meant a trip back into town to get the correct meds, etc. They apologized up one side and down the other, and gave me a discount. I wound up waiting for my husband to come home so he could take me to pick up the correct version of the medication.
I just got home from wishing my old pharmacy a hale and hearty “Fuck you and your fucking abysmal excuse for customer service!”, by switching my prescriptions to Wally World’s pharmacy. Fifteen years with these guys and every three months a new fucking nightmare trying to renew my prescriptions. Not because of drug laws or anything, but because the lamewads kept changing their fucking inane procedures for ordering medicine. Look, asswipes, I’ve been taking basically the same shit for almost 20 years now; the last change was over 3 years ago, but you stupid shitstains can’t remember who the hell I am or what I’m taking. And these crapfest excuses for security/privacy that you kept coming up with finally got to be too much for me. I tried to refill my prescriptions (3 refills available before 3/11/09) multiple times over the last week, to no avail. Your pathetic excuse for a website rejected my userid/password (guess what morons, I didn’t forget them: I wrote them down when I registered.) They worked the last two times I refilled. But I guess you made another improvement recently. Because now you’re telling me my userid doesn’t exist. You feebs emailed me separately for each prescription that’s up for refill, but I can’t reply because you used a dummy address. I tried calling on the phone, but I can’t get through. You jerked me around on the Plavix a few years ago…remember when I got a clot and ended up in the hospital, fuckers? That cost me $3000 out-of-pocket…good thing I have insurance or it would have been more like $23,000. Well, you’ve succeeded in avoiding contact with your customers (shit, you might have to actually hire someone in customer service or something, god forbid!) and you’ll never have to worry about me trying to contact you again, because I’m not a customer anymore. And the friendly, helpful young lady at Wally World didn’t need anything more than my prescriptions and my name…no secret encoder rings, no uttering strange verbal sequences whilst speaking in tongues…she didn’t even care what my insurance was because it turns out their normal price for my medicine is only 67% of what you were charging me with my insurance discount (shipping and handling extra, but at Wally World, I can just drop by next time I’m in town later this week, say ‘Hi!’ and get the goddamn prescriptions).
Economics. Through the medical insurance I have, there is one pharmacy at which I can purchase the prescriptions at the discounted price. Prior to Wal-Mart’s new discount prescription service, there really was no other place that was anywhere near competitive on price (about $500 a year vs. about $2500 a year). At first, Wal-Mart only had monthly prescriptions and a shorter list in their formulary. But now, the stuff I take is available from them* and* they sell them in 90-day quantities. When I’d checked at the beginning of the year, they were not carrying one of my blood pressure meds. I checked again today because my old pharmacy couldn’t resist the opportunity to jerk me around, and found that Wal-Mart has it now. Presto, change-o…I take my empties to Wal-Mart and the woman behind the counter does all the paperwork (OK, it was really on the computer, but you get the idea).
Well, being the half dose, I know it is for someone new to Byetta, and you start low to keep the nausea to a minimum until you can get used to the med and [hopefully] the nausea goes away. It is a great med, and I would seriously hate to see someone who could benefit from it get scared away because of a nausea reaction that could be prevented. i thought that maybe if I could catch him early, he would be warned and not get the wrong med. I did get word when I went in this afternoon that they did get the guy fairly quickly after they got the message, and all is right with the world. We both now have 3 months worth each at no charge [$225 a month is the full price. After tricare and Aetna finish arm wrassling over the paying I pay $20.]
Last fall they had a nasty mix-up with my mom’s Rx.
Her Rx was supposed to be an anti-inflammatory of some sort. Instead she ended up being given some sort of pill that made her barely able to stand, loss of balance, nauseous, and a myriad of other horrible things within a short period of time after taking he pill. My mom, being of a sensitive stomach crowd, vomited up the pill and the food she took it with, less than an half and hour after she took the pill.
The Dr’s office was closed- it was a Friday night, so my dad called the CVS, and said there was something wrong with the Rx- side effects not expected from the pill.
I don’t remember what the pharmacist said the mix-up pill was, but said since she threw it up, she should be fine in 6-12 hours, apologized profusely for the mix-up. Bring it back and they would get her the right Rx.
She suffered the effects for nearly 36 hours. If I would have known I would have taken her to the ER. Fortunately she is OK and didn’t die from the Rx mix-up.
I would have called for the head of the pharmacist that fucked that one up and would never go back to that pharmacy. But, of course, they didn’t tell me this until weeks after it happened.
They still go to the same CVS. But now they really do check the pill description against what is actually in the bottle instead of just trusting that the pharmacist put the right pill in the bottle.
CVS mixed up my son’s prescription once. He was on Ritalin and they were small pale yellow tablets. I had just gotten a new script and when I opened them they were larger red tablets.
I called the pharmacist and she said they were Ritalin but the extended release tabs but the dosage was the same. She said they would be fine and I didn’t need to bring them back. I of course did so anyway. Luckly I still had a several pills from the last script left over.
Now I know Ritalin is a controlled drug which means they have to seriously account for the mediciations and there are audits and what not. I was surprised the pharmacist did not want me to come back and exchange them.
I changed pharmacys after that. It was a little more of a pain as they had no drive thru and could be quite busy at times but it was worth it to know I would get the right drugs.
My mother uses Giant Eagle pharmacy and I have to say for the most part they are pretty good other than they screw up the number of scripts she has. I pick them up. She has seven. She always has seven. She gets them all refilled at the same time. Everytime I go through the drive thu they claim she has six and I have to tell them she has seven. They argue that there are only six. I have to make them check again and what do you know there is another one. Almost every damn time. :smack:
I switched to Target’s pharmacy recently, because they started offering the $4 generic drugs, and I have to say, I love the way they do stuff.
The bottles are shaped differently, so they rest on their caps, which allows the pharmacist to place the labeling sticker from one side, across the top, and down the other side. The name and dosage are printed in a large, easily read font.
On top of that, you get to pick a color for each member of your family, and they put that color ring on the bottle just below the cap, so if you and a family member are taking similar medications, or the same but different dosages, there’s no confusion.
I know that’s all off topic, but I really like the way they do things.
Who is your Rx insurance with? Most offer mail service for maintenance meds like it sounds you take. Most likely will cost you less, and you never have to worry about going to the pharmacy, the medicine just shows up in your mailbox. Order refills over the web or phone, etc.
I had a weird situation with one of my meds several years ago. Under my insurance, each script was $15 and I could only get 30 days at a time. If I bought the drugs without using my insurance, it cost $10/month and I could buy three months at a time. What a deal! I pay less plus I got to deal with those simpletons three times less than normal. I would have paid more for that privilege.
It worked great the first time. The second time that I tried the do it, the pharmacist told me that it was impossible for it to be less expensive under my scheme. I told him that I didn’t care, just give me my pills. Nope, I had to wait around for fifteen minutes while dickhead played around with his computer only to ultimately prove me correct.
