Actually, I’m really glad you asked that question. I have no problem verifying that claim with your doctor, because if you really did need a new prescription to be written early, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to call up your physician and say, “Hey, I lost my prescription because we were out of town/it was destroyed by the dog/etc, the pharmacy just wants to make sure you’re aware and are authorizing the early fill.”
If they know about it, the office doesn’t usually have a problem authorizing it. If they don’t believe you, then I don’t feel comfortable filling it because essentially the doctor isn’t putting his name on it to be filled at that time.
Shit happens periodically, I haven’t a problem with that. Done it on several occasions, but it’s awfully telling when I explain that to people that I’ll just have to call their doctor for confirmation and they say “Oh, well let me just take that script back, thanks”.
I don’t know how you’d plan to quantify the cost of regulation, or if scheduling actually has a cost, but the price of vicodin is hardly inflated. And honestly, if it wasn’t regulated at all anymore, you’d be seeing much higher prices OTC than RX.
However, things like oxycodone and Percocet have a very high cost, even wholesale. So the point is not what the taxpayers would be paying without regulation, it’s the fact that they are paying for a lot of people to get their monthly fix.
Thank you, that makes me feel a whole lot better, actually. I was worried that the addicts really were ruining it for everyone in a painful way. It’s annoying that they’re making you (and the doc’s office) do more work and making the patient wait longer while all the hoops are jumped through, but at least he can get the pain relief he needs.
There was another thread this week with a possible addict (an alcohol addict, but unknown status on painkillers) who was in the ER with bleeding, vomiting, kidney stones on a scan and a history of kidney stones, but the ER doc thought she was drug-seeking and gave her ibuprofen. I was really upset at that one because I felt that, addict or no, legitimate pain - or even the *possibility *of legitimate pain - should be treated IMHO, and there were subjective signs of probable pain there. Might I have been scammed? Well, yes. But that was the situation that really triggered my “even junkies deserve pain meds” comment in diggleblob’s previous thread. Sorry it was closed before I could get my thoughts in line to clarify.
There’s lots of things that can raise red flags. Not always am I allowed to do something about it, for instance the girl who was standing in line talking on the phone selling her Xanax before I had even filled it.
Well, I suppose I could, but there’s not really any proof of anything. “I heard this girl talking on the phone about selling some of her Xanax.” The police aren’t really interested in that, they’re more interested in the narcotics and the doctors who write for them.
Thanks for saving me from having to add that point. The bottom line is the addicts make the medical professionals distrustful which penalizes the people that can really benefit from the drugs.
Without giving too many details about my practice, I will say you and I could share stories that were almost identical from totally different patients. Off the top of my head…they were stolen out of my car, they didn’t work so I flushed them and now need something else, ummm, fell in the sink, the garbage disposal and the dog ate them. And of course, having an old bottle filled with aspirin or tylenol so they can “return” the “darvocet” for their drug of choice.
I need to say the one that gets the Darwin award is an RN supervisor that worked for me. Originally he was having the staff phone in vicodan stating he had one of the doctor’s approval. Then after that got a bit too often, he would steal scripts. The problem was, he would write them to himself and use his insurance. He was caught by the insurance company sending a letter asking to verify if these hundreds of pills were prescribed in a given month. It could have gone on a lot longer if he had used different names and paid cash. What a bone head.
Ha! You reminded me of my to-date favorite for why a guy needed to fill his Percocet early. Are you ready?
“When I get a new prescription filled even if I have like 3 days left, I just throw the rest away as soon as I get the new bottle.”
No. fucking. joke.
I was like, well, that’s interesting, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that before. You’ll have to explain that to your doctor, thanks.
I bet we could share some stories, about people with pets impervious to Dilaudid and can stomach 300+ mg of hydromorphone in one sitting.
And Guin, I could very well call her doctor, but it’s still hearsay and frankly to get a hold of an ER doc to say “I think your patient is selling their meds” is just such a hassle. They probably wouldn’t be surprised anyway.
Pretty much, actually, if they’re willing to pay for it themselves. I know I’ve had to waste a lot of time and money in my life making office visits to just to obtain a prescription for something I already knew I needed, either because I’d been treated for the condition before or because I was able to read up enough to make an accurate enough guess on my own. I’m not talking about selling do-it-yourself triple bypass kits at Home Depot, but really, what’s the point of making me pay for doctor visits if I wanted a prescription for Retin-A, or Viagra, or some allergy medication, or NSAID painkillers? Is the doctor going to perform some insta-DNA test or wave his Bones McCoy scanner over me first, to determine whether it’s suitable? No, he’s going to charge me $80-100 and hand me the script.
Based on the OP’s story and other posts, I’d say it’s likely s/he is trying to score some pills too soon, and may be using them for less-than-medical purposes. So what? IMO it doesn’t justify all the highfalutin’ finger-wagging and arrogance from the pharmacy gatekeepers like ladyfoxfyre and her toadies, patting yourselves on the back over all the dirty, sneaky pillheads whose nefarious plots you foiled. Get over yourselves. I’d just as soon see every pharmacist replaced with a vending machine; they could do the job just as well, and without the snotty attitude.
Since this is turning into an “Ask The Person That Works in a Pharmacy” thread.
adjusts her soapbox
My husband was addicted to methodone. It was entirely outside my sphere of knowledge. Since then, I have had heightened awareness of drug abuse. Earlier in the thread, I mentioned that for about two weeks I had pharmacies all over Tampa/St. Pete calling me leaving messages that my prescription was ready. (the automated calls) They never said my name (thanks Hiippaa) but it was obvious to ME that someone was doctor/pharmacy shopping. I finally called two of them, CVS and Walgreens to let them know that whoever they were calling for, was giving them false information and going to many other pharmacies. Neither pharmacy gave a crap at all. Well, Walgreens did lock my # to my name so no one else could use it. But these are my questions.
A. My husband was an addict, due to regulations, they couldn’t tell me who it was using my number, so I have no idea if it was my husband, so even if it was behavior that COULD have thrown up a flag for me, it couldn’t.
B. As a pharmacist interested in maintaining professional integrity, couldn’t they have looked up who it was that was using my # and looked into their history and possibly stopped it? I know CVS didn’t ask my name or # and gave me a “yeah, just ignore the calls.” type of answer. It didn’t seem very proactive at all. By your statements it seems like they would be MORE proactive.
C. If this happens again, should I call the task force? Are they listed? Or should I just ignore the calls and hope the addict finds a new #?
I rarely have either, in “real life,” and yet the self-congratulatory attitude is certainly on display in this thread. Actually most pharmacists I’ve known have been quite pleasant, but that doesn’t mean they’ve added anything in particular to the transaction over and above what a plain old cashier could provide, other than the ability to refuse to hand me my meds if they’re so inclined.
I like the pharmacists better than the doctors and get better information from them, usually. There is a kernel of good sense in what Vinyl Turnip is saying, though. I have adhesive capsulitis in my shoulder; it’s been diagnosed, I’ve done the physio, now I just need the occasional heavy-duty anti-inflammatory when I’ve been gardening too much. It’s like the ads for yeast infections say; when you think you’ve got a problem, go to your doctor. When you know damned well what the problem is and you just need a prescription refill, it would be nice to just go to the pharmacist. (I’ve heard that we are actually thinking of allowing pharmacists to refill things like birth control pills on their own here in Canada - yay!)
Oh, somebody mentioned earlier about piggybacking ibuprofen and tylenol, and I wanted to give that two thumbs up for pain relief, too. When my shoulder was actually frozen and hurting like two sons-of-bitches, the pain went right away with the combo. It seemed like the combination was greater than the sum of the parts.
I’m trying to think of a good way to respond to all of this, but I really can’t. You people who think that all things prescription should just be let out for the public to sort out have obviously an extremely short sighted view of how that would affect all sorts of things; from addiction rates, antibiotic resistance, overdosing, and misdiagnosing (if you can even call a self-diagnosis a diagnosis).
The point of all this isn’t to debate what should be legal from the pharmacy or to accuse anybody there of some sort of perceived moral superiority. We’re talking about what IS the law and what is our legal responsibility.
But I know that no amount of reason is going to change anything in your worldview of “I know what I should have, so fuck all you people who are standing in my way to get it”. So good luck getting the healthcare system changed to a free-for-all, I hope that works out really well for you. My immune system doesn’t hope so, but really, it sounds like a good plan :rolleyes:
And I disagree, featherlou, I don’t think there’s a lot of good sense anywhere in what Vinyl Turnip is saying, I think it’s a lot of bullshit wrapped around an even more prominently snotty attitude than the one he claims I have. Medical and pharmacy degrees be damned, he knows what’s best for him, thank-you-very-much.
I work for a company that makes machines which dispense meds in hospitals. However, someone still needs to put the drugs into the machines, and check that it’s done correctly, and that the machine hasn’t fucked something up (which happens more than I care to think about). There will never be a machine able to replace a pharmacist.
It very well could have been your husband who was doctor and pharmacy shopping and the pharmacy may have indeed had the correct phone number.
By your call to the pharmacy, you’re just alerting them to the fact that you’re receiving automated calls, and there’s a pretty good chance whoever it was didn’t pay much attention beyond the “Why am I getting calls telling me I have a prescription to be picked up? I don’t remember ordering any medication…” Remember, AB, we live in Florida, there are a lot of people here who can’t remember things they’ve done over the past week
But seriously, they could have looked up your phone number and verified everyone on that number, and then deleted that contact number for any of the incorrect profiles.
Like I said, from what you’ve described, it doesn’t sound like a really obvious case that someone was using your contact number to get prescriptions filled at lots of locations. If it happens again, I’d call the pharmacy back, ask them to search their system by phone number if possible, verify every profile that is authorized to be under that number and ask that they remove anyone else from that phone number. That’s about all you can do, unfortunately.
