Too late to edit, but wanted to add that the above is for informational purposes only, and I’m not sure how much of it is specific to my state/company. I am in the unique position of being somewhere in the middle of this argument, as I work FOR a pharmacy but not IN a pharmacy(the only reason I know most of what I know is because I had to train and become a licensed RX technician in order to keep my front-end management job).
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Umm, Doc? You do know that quite a few 'scripts can be mailed right to your home, don’t you? 
[/QUOTE]
If you live in the US - I don’t.
[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Unfortunately, because of my insurance, I am tied to one particular chain of pharmacies that maintains the same company wide policy.
And yes, I’ve taken it upon my happy ass to ask- while you may think otherwise of me, I’m not an idiot. Half of the time the person I’m speaking to laughs and says that’s just the policy, they know it’s incredibly stupid, but they can’t do anything about it. The other half of the time the person hems and haws and just says that’s the way it is. So, I’m left to deduce that- for whatever God forsaken reason- the pharmacy that I am compelled by my insurance company to go to (if I want my prescriptions covered) maintains an incredibly stupid policy.
And again, yes. I have complained both to a manager and to the insurance company. I got a nice little pre-printed letter back from the company tanking me for my concerns and that was that.
Which is why I’m here in the Pit, bitching about my incredibly stupid pharmacy and their incredibly stupid policy because, as it stands, I can’t go elsewhere.
[/QUOTE]
First off, amazingly enough, I don’t think of you as an idiot. I don’t think of you at all. Give your attitude a fucking rest already.
I’m finished talking to you. If this is how you deal with the people in the pharmacy, it’s not a big surprise that you get shitty service. Your “happy ass” needs to do some growing up before you deal with the big kids, seriously. :rolleyes:
Diosa, could you afford to just pay for the pills out-of-pocket and avoid this hassle? I know they’re ridiculously expensive, but it’s a lot easier, and when I was doing that if I had the money I could get multiple month’s worth at a time.
If money would be an issue, maybe Planned Parenthood?
[QUOTE=Ruby]
What the hell does a pharmacy tech do anyway. Can’t the lesser paid techs triage the phone calls and questions so that the pharmacist only gets the ones that require an educated answer?
[/QUOTE]
I think Ms. Pumpkin has answered that question much better than I could have, including screening phone calls and deal with angry customers from everywhere in the store, regardless of whether they need something from the pharmacy. The phone calls are screened, believe me, because the more time people waste calling in asking dumbass questions the more your prescription is being inturrupted from start to finish. We take that into consideration.
I really can’t believe we’ve gotten into the discussion yet again about why prescription medication has to be dispensed at a pharmacy, and not 7-11. :rolleyes:
[quote=DiosaBellisima]
I am tied to one particular chain of pharmacies that maintains the same company wide policy.
[quote]
I cannot imagine a chain that has a company-wide policy of making you wait 24 hours for a prescription to be filled. That would be an incredibly bad business policy, would you kindly like to share with us which chain this is, or maybe elaborate about why you are only permitted to visit one location?
And as Miss Creant said, we aren’t holding things up intentionally. Sometimes things happen, like the pharmacist is verifying your prescription but just got a phone call from a patient thinking they got the wrong pills in their bottle, and now he has to spend 10 minutes convincing her otherwise. It’s pretty hectic sometimes, but like I’ve said before sometimes it just comes down to incompetent people working there. Luckily the bad ones don’t tend to last for too terribly long. 
[QUOTE=BoBettie]
First off, amazingly enough, I don’t think of you as an idiot. I don’t think of you at all. Give your attitude a fucking rest already.
I’m finished talking to you. If this is how you deal with the people in the pharmacy, it’s not a big surprise that you get shitty service. Your “happy ass” needs to do some growing up before you deal with the big kids, seriously. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, the age old Doper retort- if if you can’t legitimately argue back, just attack the poster’s age. My last reply wasn’t intended to be rude at all, but rather just to further explain the situation; frankly, it seems like you’re the one who inserted some attitude in there that was not that there. I guess I can play your game, too. Perhaps with old age comes the ability to read between the lines on an internet message board and if that is the case, I can’t wait until middle age sets in.
And for what it’s worth, that’s not how I deal with the people in the pharmacy. I’m regularly told how incredibly sweet, friendly, and perky I am (IRL that is, it’s one of my more irritating traits, I hear). Plus, (and again, I swear I’m not an idiot), I realize you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so I’m never rude like that to those working in a service position. Old bitties on a message board, though? Yeah, if you’re going to screech at me for making a legitimate complaint about my health insurance just because you’re taking it ever so personally because you happen to work in a pharmacy, well then yeah, I’m not exactly going to friendly to you either.
[QUOTE=whiterabbit]
Diosa, could you afford to just pay for the pills out-of-pocket and avoid this hassle? I know they’re ridiculously expensive, but it’s a lot easier, and when I was doing that if I had the money I could get multiple month’s worth at a time.
If money would be an issue, maybe Planned Parenthood?
[/QUOTE]
I actually considered all of those options for a while (and another: the student health center at school), but in the end, my insurance is by far the cheapest. Oh, and my insurance gives me three month’s at a time, which is definitely a big plus.
In the end, I just realized I need to work with the system, since it has more advantages than disadvantages. I’ve talked to the pharmacy folks and they’ve set it up in the system so I can drop my prescription off a bit more in advance than usual and they’ll hold it for me (both of which help when you’re running between work, school, and attempting to get a little sleep in between). Another plus is that my insurer just opened another branch no more than a block down the street from my house.
Ultimately, I still don’t understand their weird birth control policy (or why it’s so different than any other drug) and I had no idea me complaining about it would raise the feathers so greatly of some (not you, of course, WhiteRabbit).
I work as a Junior doctor in a hospital. It takes 3 hours on average for the pharmacy to get together a week’s supply of pills for our patients so that they can go home. They usually don’t need all their pills, just the new ones started during this stay.
During this 2 or 3 hours, there is usually someone waiting for their bed, I can’t clerk in the new patient because there is nowhere private to see them and I can’t send the old patient down to wait elsewhere because they’re not really well enough to sit in a chair in the entrance hall for 3 hours.
The pharmacy allegedly has a “robot” to automatically pick the stuff off the shelf, so they a) don’t have to find it and b) don’t have to schlep it back to the counter. We NEVER dispense more than 7 days supply (people have a week to go to their own doctor for more), the patient has been getting the meds on the ward, so we know it is in stock, and our hospital pharmacists do not have to deal with lost shoppers, members of the public or insurance companies.
Still it takes 3 hours and at some point during these 3 hours I will get a phone call from someone asking if I meant to prescribe what I prescribed, which I invariably did. usually because the “robot” has flagged up some sort of error message, and they trust the robot more than me.
I do not trust the robot, and some days I doubt it even exists.
[QUOTE=ladyfoxfyre]
I don’t believe I ever said I’m only allowed to visit one location- to clarify again, I’m only allowed to go to their particular chain.
I have Kaiser for my health insurance, which I’m sure will lead everyone to jump in and say, “Well, there’s your damned problem!” While that’s certainly true for a litany of reasons, it still doesn’t explain their policy to hold the pills for 24 hours. And I’ve been to 6 different Kaiser pharmacies here in town, so it’s certainly not just one that is having this problem. Maybe it’s just a my town thing and if that’s the case, I suppose I’ve got bigger problems (like being from Bakersfield 
).
And for those of you who don’t know, Kaiser has medical facilities and in each one is a pharmacy. If you want your prescription filled and you want it covered under your insurance, you have to go to their pharmacy-chain and only their pharmacy-chain.
[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Ah yes, the age old Doper retort- if if you can’t legitimately argue back, just attack the poster’s age.
[/QUOTE]
I honestly don’t believe this was an attack on your age, I believe it was an attack on your maturity, which I don’t think was out of line.
Stop getting so goddamned defensive about the most ridiculous things. Now that you’ve explained more about your particular situation, we can all see that your beef isn’t with the pharmacy (because no retail chain would make your wait 24 hours for a refill unless there was some sort of catastrophic event), your beef is with Kaiser who makes you go to Kaiser pharmacies that require that you wait 24 hours for your prescription. So I think perhaps you’re mistaken about how it works outside of your shitty little insurance bubble.
Now you want to say that you have this legitimate complaint about your insurance company and all these old meanies are piling on you for whatever reason. That’s fine, but this was not all revealed that your issue was with KAISER and not PHARMACIES as you had indicated in, well, every post except for the last one.
So I fear you will continue to be intentionally obtuse, and feign confusion when people say you’re maybe misunderstanding things, and point out “false quotes” other people have attributed to you so that you can show by example just how dumb we all are, and continue to do the whole “Oh, I’m so sorry that I think that this is reasonable…” and “Wait, let me go back and find out where I said [paraphrased thing], no, looks like I didn’t ever say exactly that.”
Really now. Let’s just learn and move on.
[QUOTE=ladyfoxfyre]
Stop getting so goddamned defensive about the most ridiculous things.
[/QUOTE]
Everyone keeps attributing motives to what I’m saying that simply aren’t there. That little bit you quoted? That wasn’t me being defensive even remotely, I was genuinely attempting to clarify. It seemed from what was said that it was believed that I could only go to ONE pharmacy, not one chain- so I clarified it further.
I’ll just bow out of the thread now, since just about everything I’m saying is being taken out vastly out of context.
[QUOTE=irishgirl]
Still it takes 3 hours and at some point during these 3 hours I will get a phone call from someone asking if I meant to prescribe what I prescribed, which I invariably did. usually because the “robot” has flagged up some sort of error message, and they trust the robot more than me.
I do not trust the robot, and some days I doubt it even exists.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t even know where to begin here. Do you know all the medications your patient is taking? Most doctors don’t know about medications that other doctors may have prescribed. (and sometimes they don’t know half of what they wrote)
Many patients have multiple doctors. When a major DUR pops up there’s no way we’re not going to call the doctor. And sometimes the doctor does write for the wrong drug. I’ve seen doctors write for a strength that’s not even available. One doctor wrote a script for Coreg CR 37.5mg. Coreg CR comes in 10mg, 20mg, 40mg and 80mg. Coreg come in 3.125mg. 6.25mg, 12.5mg and 25mg. Where the 37.5 came from I’ll never know.
So yes. they will probably call every time to verify. 99 times out of 100 you’ll write for the right drug and strength. The one time that you don’t and the pharmacy doesn’t check, I guarantee the first words out of your mouth will be “why didn’t they call me”
I’ll address the “what techs do” as soon as I calm down.
[QUOTE=MsRobyn]
This is the best explanation I’ve ever heard.
Robin
[/QUOTE]
All I really seen in this is a pharmacist blaming the customer. I’ve had to wait long periods of time for a prescription to be filled when everything was in order.
Not everyone is disorganized and stupid.
[QUOTE=DudleyGarrett]
All I really seen in this is a pharmacist blaming the customer. I’ve had to wait long periods of time for a prescription to be filled when everything was in order.
Not everyone is disorganized and stupid.
[/QUOTE]
The end of that article says:
The point is, even a couple significant delays also impact all the other customers who are waiting for their prescription. Your prescription may have everything in order, but the same can’t be said for all the others.
[QUOTE=DudleyGarrett]
All I really seen in this is a pharmacist blaming the customer. I’ve had to wait long periods of time for a prescription to be filled when everything was in order.
Not everyone is disorganized and stupid.
[/QUOTE]
How do you know everything is in order?
[QUOTE=Waenara]
The end of that article says:The point is, even a couple significant delays also impact all the other customers who are waiting for their prescription. Your prescription may have everything in order, but the same can’t be said for all the others.
[/QUOTE]
Understood, but how often do you think it happens that someone’s prescription/doctor/address/insurance is so messed up?
Everytime I’ve been to the pharmacy, it seems that there are a couple people behind the counter working dutifully trying to complete the prescriptions, and they still take 30 minutes to fill.
Miss Creant, I’m assuming things are in order because I’ve never been asked any questions about my insurance, doctor, address, quantities, etc. I usually bring in the prescription, hand it to the pharmacist (or tech), and they say “20 minutes.” I’ve never received the completed prescription in less than 30 minutes.
I always assumed that the pharmacy techs had a lot of hoops to jump through which is why it took so long. I never thought it was because they were lazy or incompetent.
[QUOTE=DudleyGarrett]
Understood, but how often do you think it happens that someone’s prescription/doctor/address/insurance is so messed up?
Um, at least 5 out of 10 are a problem. Most are some sort of TPR (Third Party Rejection). New insurance, new doctor, drug interactions. Sometimes it’s the script. It can take 15 minutes to decipher what the doctor wrote.
Here are the steps to processing scripts where I work:
Take the script from the patient - Sounds easy, but not so much. I once spent 20 minutes trying to find a patient’s profile. When I gave up and started to register her, she gave me a completely different birthday then the one she gave me while I was looking for her profile. For 20 minutes she insisted her birthday was in October and it was April.
Scan the script
Type the script
The script is then verified by the RPH - If the script was entered wrong (wrong patient, wrong directions, wrong days supply) the RPH will send it back to the tech.
Print Leaflet - once the RPH approves that the script is correct, the leaflet prints and the tech can fill it.
Fill - Pull the drug with the correct NDC. Sometimes we have the correct drug, but different MFG. When that happens the tech fixes it and the RPH has to check it again. Scan the leaflet, then scan the stock bottle and weigh out the correct quantity. (my store doesn’t have baker cells or a robot) Double count controls.
Put the label on the bottle, put everything in a tote and drop it in line.
It might take 10 minutes to do all of that, but about a million things can go wrong between any of those steps.
Patients call and ask “is my medicine ready yet?” Um, I don’t know. Who are you and what medication are you talking about.
Everytime I’ve been to the pharmacy, it seems that there are a couple people behind the counter working dutifully trying to complete the prescriptions, and they still take 30 minutes to fill.
Miss Creant, I’m assuming things are in order because I’ve never been asked any questions about my insurance, doctor, address, quantities, etc. I usually bring in the prescription, hand it to the pharmacist (or tech), and they say “20 minutes.” I’ve never received the completed prescription in less than 30 minutes.
I always assumed that the pharmacy techs had a lot of hoops to jump through which is why it took so long. I never thought it was because they were lazy or incompetent.
[/QUOTE]
That’s my point. There might not be any problems with your prescription. But there’s a problem with the 3 others that are ahead of you.
I know people want their medication, but this is not McDonalds. The drive-thru is for convenience not speed. We can do it fast or we can do it right. I’m not going to cut corners and take a chance that someone gets the wrong drug. If people have a problem with that, too bad. I’d rather have them angry, then dead.
Sorry, messed up the coding there - carry on
[QUOTE=DudleyGarrett]
I’ve never received the completed prescription in less than 30 minutes.
[/QUOTE]
If this is the case, I suggest you try a different pharmacy, a well organized and well-run pharmacy shouldn’t take 30 minutes to fill a waiter. What we’re trying to explain is the magnitude of shit that has to happen before your prescription can be given to you, but sometimes there are just bad stores.
Do a bit of shopping around. I know CVS and Walgreens periodically do promotions where you can get a gift card for transferring your prescription to their location, (a transfer is a prescription that has active, i.e. not expired, refills at another location, you can usually drop off an old bottle from the pharmacy at the new one and they will phone the other pharmacy to get it for you). This would be a good way to try different locations, and get some free money out of the deal too.
[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
And for what it’s worth, that’s not how I deal with the people in the pharmacy. I’m regularly told how incredibly sweet, friendly, and perky I am (IRL that is, it’s one of my more irritating traits, I hear).
[/QUOTE]
HAW HAW HAW!
I know you’re joking now.
Anyway, I said what I had to say. You can read and understand it or ignore it, your choice.
If you’ll excuse me, I gotta go soak my bunions dye my hair blue. HOLY SHIT, I’m LATE FOR BINGO! God, getting old is a bitch.
:rolleyes:
[QUOTE=ladyfoxfyre]
If this is the case, I suggest you try a different pharmacy, a well organized and well-run pharmacy shouldn’t take 30 minutes to fill a waiter. What we’re trying to explain is the magnitude of shit that has to happen before your prescription can be given to you, but sometimes there are just bad stores.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly- it’s like asking OMG why do I have to wait for 3 hours at my doctor’s office when I have an appointment at 1pm??? I don’t know, but if it happens every damned time, find a new doctor. It’s shitty service. It happens at doctor’s offices, pharmacies, day care centers, McDonalds, and everywhere else.