Where to start: The last time one of my many prescriptions needed a refill, my regular gastro, let’s call him Doctor A, was unavailable, so Doctor B (presumably from the same office) sent a new prescription to my local CVS and it was filled as always.
Fast forward… I’m out of refills so my pharmacy, in their infinte wisdom and desire to be helpful, requested a new prescription from the doctor. This was reaponded to with a refusal stating that I had never been a patient of that doctor. They tried several times, always getting the same response.
Finally, after I communicated with the.pharmacy and the doctor’s office several times it was determined that the pharmacy had been sending the requests to Doctor B, who quite honestly had never seen me. For all I know the response was from a computer and the request had never been perused by human eyes. So, fair enough. These things happen.
I don’t recall the exact order of the comedy of errors at this point, but there were several attempts by the pharmacy to send requests to the correct doctor without receiving a response and several attempts by the doctor’s office to fax a new prescription to the pharmacy, which the pharmacy claims to have never received. (Do the actually still send faxes or are they misusing that term?) This went on for over a week.
Anyway, at this point the pharmacy tells me that I need to talk to the doctor’s office. When I do so they tell me that I need to talk to the pharmacy. It is at this point that the known universe collapses from the paradox.
I finally convinced the doctor’s office to PLEASE call the pharmacy and talk to them by VOICE, on the PHONE. They finally did so and while I was typing this I received a text that my prescription is ready to br picked up!
I’m no technophobe, but sometines people need to talk directly to resolve problems that the system isn’t designed to handle.
I get this sometimes from my mail-in pharmacy. It is worse now that my PCP has recently retired and I am temporarily (a few weeks) between doctors, but even in normal times, this “faxing” back and forth seems to fail for no good reason sometimes. I always wonder, for example, why the substitute doctor has to file a new prescription instead of okaying a renewal of the old one. Probably has to do with money. And why does my pharmacy want me to always have more than a 90 days supply, and when I fall below that they start nagging me to refill?
Anyway, in this situation I mostly blame the pharmacy. Doctor’s offices do sometimes lose the “fax” and don’t respond to it, especially if the doctor in question is not there (long vacation, or retired, or something). My pharmacy usually seems loath to send it a second time before nagging me to contact my doctor.
I suspect 99% of this is CYA for anything that might go wrong. All I know to do is to work around it as best I can.
Yes, faxes are still widely used in healthcare in America, between doctors’ offices and hospitals, between doctors’ offices and pharmacies, between doctors’ offices, etc. No idea why. There’s also a system of electronic prescriptions.
The usual reason given is security, even though pretty much every electronic system, even the ones not actually designed for security, are more secure than faxes. And systems that are designed for security, which are easily available off the shelf, are much more secure.
Just wait til they fill your script with a number/letter one character off yours, in that electronic system.
I swear I saw smoke coming out of the pharmacist ears and mist hanging around the building. Scary music started playing…quietly at first.
I left.
There’s still an antibiotic floating around in a black hole with my name, but wrong code on it.
My wife and I take a same prescription, but filled at different times, and received by mail. When mine came up for refill I got a couple of emails from CVS reminding me to refill, with links, as well as a text with a link.
I decided to use the link in one of the emails, which, on my smartphone, sends me to my insurance company’s app, where I am supposed to be able to request the refill (evidently, the company wants to funnel members to their shitty app to do all their health care needs). But, one problem, while there is a bunch of other fluff about changing plans, finding a doctor, finding a pharmacy, getting new cards, reviewing my benefits, how to save money on my prescriptions, as well as other crap about being healthy, no where to be found is a way to refill my existing prescription. No where. So I try to log into CVS to do this - no bueno - it recognizes me as a member of this insurance company and sends me right back to the effing shitty app! Finally, irritated at several log-ins and two-factor authentications, I go to the text and click the link from CVS - boom! Instant message from them “We have received your order, you can check status here {new link}.” How effing hard is it for the insurance company to set this up?!
However, there is a glitch! When I mentioned my experience to my wife, she said she got a notice that her refill is being processed, and she didn’t do anything. Evidently, I was sent a link to refill her prescription LOL. So, she logged into the effing app from her phone and was somehow able to see my profile and order my refill. Now, we’ll see whose gets here first!
Tell me about it. I was literally down to my last dose when I got the text saying that I could pick it up. And i only had that left because I had started taking half doses to stretch out what was left.
Heh. My gf recently reminded me that I have to find a new PCP, as my previous doctor retired 2 1/2 years ago. She asked how I was still getting my blood pressure medication, and I explained my old doctor, though retired, is still technically licensed. In exchange for a mix-six of beer, he takes care of my prescription which is through a Canadian pharmacy.
I recently had several prescriptions renewed while visiting my doctor. He said he’d “fax” them to the pharmacy, but did so from his computer, and when I visited the pharmacy later they checked their computer to verify that the “fax” had been received. I’m in Canada, but it’s likely that in both cases obsolete terminology is being used to describe a more up-to-date process.
I have more than once needed to fax something to a phone number and was able to send that fax from my computer. Don’t remember if it was an online service or software.
I haven’t had a satisfactory way of dealing with this since my family doctor retired (three years ago). I had a GP for six months but she then quit medicare to go into private service. On the way out, she did renew my scripts for a year. Then I was assigned a medical practice but not a physician and saw someone last June who renewed for another year (the longest allowed). I just tried to get an appointment with that practice and was told, “No appointments available for the next two weeks.” Okay so how about in three weeks? “We make appointments only two weeks in advance.” Then I spoke to my pharmacist and tried to get her to call them. Their voice mail has a special number to push if you are a pharmacist. She refused to call and asked me for their fax number. So I came back home and looked all over their web site for a fax number. None I could find. She did mention that, none of my prescribed drugs are restricted (a couple are actually OTC) the pharmacist can, under new Quebec law, prescribe them themselves. So I am not seriously concerned.
Sure, absolutely, make them rarer. But snags in the system like this are sure to happen occasionally.
And sending a fax from a computer means emailing it to some third-party service, who then sends the fax. It’s still a fax, with all of the insecurity and inconvenience that entails.
I have flushed so many pills down the toilet. Let me tell you. They are always changing things on me. It’s a waste money, resources and no telling what other things it’s causing. (I have a septic tank in a rural place. My flushed pills ain’t getting no one’s drinking water).
I began asking doctors to prescribe as few as they can at first, we’ll see if I’m gonna need to stay on it. Then we can go bigger.
I have some things I get every 3 months. I have some things monthly. I have one thing twice a month. It’s hard to get at the moment so they won’t let you get more than 15 at a time.
Then there’s the thing I have scripts for in two different sizes. That causes many issues.
I can’t think of any way to simplify my meds needs. Believe me, we’ve tried
A few months ago I needed a prescription refilled. The original prescription had, of course, run out of refills so CVS they said they would have to put in a request to my doctor for a refill order. A week later I went to check the status on the order and was informed that they had not gotten a response from the doctor, and suggested that I put in a request with the doctor myself. So I go to the UNC medical website, where I’m supposed to be able to pull up my medication list and request refills. except that for some reason there’s a block on that one medication. So I sent a message to my PCP, explaining that I need a refill sent to CVS ASAP, as I’m about to run out. In the course of doing so, I noticed that the original prescription had been written up, not by my PCP, but by a doctor at the hospital during one of my visits. I suspect that when CVS tried to request the refill it had been sent to the hospital instead of my PCP. And of course it got lost in the system.