I get a call yesterday morning from my doctor. Apparently, they’ve decided to not refill my prescription for the heart medication I take. I actually need to go in for them to see the heart condition I was born with is still there and didn’t magically heal itself overnight. Now, I can understand if I was taking strong painkillers, or something similar, but I take beta-blockers to slow a heartrate that can climb to 180 beats per minute(average is 60-80). And can’t you even give me a one-month refill until I can see a doctor? My BF has the car all day and it’s very difficult to get me to work on a daily basis and now some assmunch doctor insists on seeing me?
Thanks a whole fucking lot. I can already feel the effects of a lot of medicine, and it’s only been a day.
Morelin, I used to feel the same way about my and my wife’s asthma medicine. Then, a few years ago, we met a doctor who introduced us to newer medication that managed our symptoms much, much better than what we had been using, and I gladly go to him once a year to get my checkup.
I’m slightly confused. Is the doc asking you to go without your meds in the interim? If so, that’s complete bullshit and probably malpractice. Or is the doc just wanting you to come in and see him because you haven’t been there in a while?
I was wondering that too, porcupine. When I worked in a pediatric cardiology office - and I’m not saying this is the case here - we’d get parents calling in saying that their kid’s meds were completely out and they needed a refill that day, and looking at the chart, we’d see that the patient had missed the last couple appointments but the parent had done “urgent refill” calls before. Our doctor would offer to see the kid that day (even if he didn’t have clinic that day) and write out a refill on the spot.
If he’s telling you to go without, that sucks. See if you can get him to call in a prescription for a week’s worth, and make an appointment in that time frame, if he really just wants you to come in. He’s probably thinking of his own liability too - I’m sure along the line, some doctor has been sued (successfully or not, it still shows up on your records) for just refilling a scrip and suddenly something happens because the patient hadn’t been seen in a while.
They are trying to crack down on doctors calling scripts but not seeing the patients. How they would know is beyond me. My doctor told me this when I tried to get him to call in a new isulin script. I don’t know who’s cracking down. The medical board? The insurance companies?
I told him “You think maybe my pancreas has been reborn?” He said he has to see me every six months, and my many scipts will all expire after six months.
I can answer this for her. She was out of refills and dropped the container off at CVS to get a refill. She got a call from the doctor yesterday saying the doc wasn’t going to refill it until she came in for an appointment. She has no meds in the interim.
That’s really unusual. Maybe people are just less willing to let someone go without seizure meds, but neither I nor my mother has ever had a problem with the pharmacist refusing to give us enough pills to last until we can get in to see the doctor.
Personally, I don’t have a problem going in every six months to get an ongoing health problem rechecked. It’s just good medicine to follow up periodically and make sure that things aren’t getting worse and looking for new developments. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s a necessary evil.
Out of curiosity, didn’t the bottle you took in for refill have a note at the bottom that said you had no refills left? I guess it would just never occur to me to assume that I could get a refill without seeing the doc if I had no refills left.
Before the time when my doc told me I had to come in to get a new script, he had called in literally dozens of scripts that had ‘expired’ by exceeding the refill allotment. It had been quite a while since I’d seen him, at least for that particular problem. (I had seen his PA for flu’s and what not)
Mine did too, I figured this was fairly commonplace for “every day” sort of meds. Hell, I had one give me some trial packs of Allegra and say “If it works and you want more, just call me, I’ll call it in for you.” And since these are beta blockers and heart medicine I figure, you know, maybe stopping them isn’t such a bright idea.
As a rule, no one will write a prescription with unlimited refills, but when the medication is being used to treat a lifelong condition, like asthma, for example, it’s not at all uncommon for the doctor to authorize a refill over the phone. After all, it’s not as if your asthma will magically cure itself. So, for certain kinds of medications, the “zero refills” indication just means that the pharmacy, instead of refilling it on the spot, will call the doctor to get an OK. Of course, it depends heavily on the type of medication, and what it’s being used to treat, so sometimes “zero refills” really does mean what it says!
Yeah, it said No refills left, but the pharmacy just calls the doc to ok a new set of three refills (which last three months). I know that I should be going to a cardiologist every 6 months, but I’ve unfortunately kept putting it off, especially since my doctor filled it, and yes, even changed the meds to a newer form because she checked me out and I had a new complaint last time I saw her. On the other hand, it would make sense to say, here’s a one month refill come in to see us before this runs out.
So, come Monday I’ll call a cardiologist to see me and write me out a new prescription.
Damn, that’s harsh. The one med that I needed a checkup for, the pharmacy filled it once the doctor called to say that I had made an appointment. I’d think he’d be worried about the risk of having you go without your meds.
Morelin, I suggest you find a new doctor after this visit, and I also suggest you write a letter to your current doctor telling him/her exactly why you’re doing it. Wanting to see you on a regular basis is to be expected, but not keeping you on your maintenance meds until you get in to the office for your next appointment is absolutely unacceptable. They absolutely should have ok’ed a 30 day refill (or whatever is appropriate until your next office visit).
I’ll probably be on meds for the rest of my life for my migraines. I usually end up seeing him every few months even when I’m feeling good, but we’ve adjusted meds by phone with no problem before. I’ve never had a problem getting refills for my maintenance meds. I sometimes have to whine a bit to get refills for some of my take-as-needed meds, but that’s a little different case as some of them are addictive. I’ve been going through a really bad time lately so sometimes 20 Vicodin only last me a couple of weeks. Vicodin is not the pain reliever for me - they’ve never been effective for either migraine or back pain - barely take the edge off.
I’m in the process of switching to a new neuro, mainly because of convenience of location. At my next appointment, I’m having the discussion on pain management. If I don’t think I can work with the guy, I’m going shopping for a different doctor. I don’t expect my doc to prescribe whatever I ask him for, but I sure as hell expect him to take my symptoms and my pain management seriously. They’ve got a big ole poster on their wall on how to manage pain correctly, so I trust they will work with me on mine.
Twice a year is not unreasonable for a chronic condition. Particularly one that may develop superimposed complications. Also, the doctor is better able, in some aspects, to identify complications to the med you are on, or perhaps suggest something newer or better. I am sure it sucks to have a chronic illness, but it sounds like it’s probably been close to a year since you last saw him. He sounds like he is practicing good medicine.
That being said, to not refill the perscription for 14 or 30 days so you would have time to reasonable schedule an appointment at a time that is reasonable to you seems a little harsh. Maybe you can have someone call him and say that your heart rate went up to 200 and you passed out because of your lack of meds and are now in the hospital.
Our clinic employs a nurse whose job is to do nothing but field phone calls from patients. She figures that well over half of her time is spent with patients calling in to ask for prescriptions to be called in.
Sometimes you have to be kind of a bitch about it. For instance, I have a patient who is on large doses of oral narcotics (with a good and documented reason for the pain). The doses are so large that I have her pick up a new prescription every Friday so she doesn’t have that much oxycodone in her house or on her person. She was calling every single day to tell us that her pain was worse and she needed her dose increased–but this was right after she missed one appointment, and just before she missed a second one we made for her. I had the nurse explain that she could keep coming in to pick up the already-written scripts, but we wouldn’t increase the dose until she actually kept an appointment to see me.
My rule on routine meds is that if the patient hasn’t been seen by our clinic in a year, they need to make an appointment, and then we’ll call in enough of whatever it is to get them to that appointment. If they miss that appointment without calling to reschedule, and then call up for more refills, we just can’t do it. If someone keeps rescheduling appointments and asking for more refills, we’ll eventually cut them off. Scheduled meds are subject to far more stringent rules, naturally.
To look at it from the cold, monetary side for a minute–calling in prescriptions is something that a doctor’s office devotes a lot of time to that it does not get paid for. It is done as a courtesy to the patients. Why should the doctor keep providing this service to someone who won’t come in for an appointment?
I don’t mean to rant from the other side. Your doctor should not let you go without your meds, as long as you’re making an effort to see him regularly. If it has really been that long since you’ve seen him, and they keep getting calls for refills every three months, I can understand why they’d eventually have to stop. Still, they shouldn’t do it without warning. If they had said when they made your last three-month refill that you needed to make an appointment before they were up, it would be a different story.
While I’m thinking about it–has anyone ever had a doctor who charged for calling in prescriptions? It seems like an obvious way to compensate for that large amount of time the office spends with that task, and a good way to discourage those who abuse the courtesy. If I needed my doctor to call something in, I wouldn’t object to a $5-$10 charge for the service.
I would not be happy at all if my doctor started charging for script refills. I would be not happy to the point of thinking about finding another doctor. But I see him regularly (lately it’s every couple of months), so it’s a non-issue anyway.
I definitely agree that if you’re on routine meds, you should be seeing your doc at least once a year. That’s kind of the definition of “under a doctor’s care.”
I don’t think he was talking about charging for the refills themselves, more a service fee for calling it in rather than you hauling your ass over to pick up the prescription and then taking it to the pharmacy.
I don’t know that it’s such a bad idea, really. After dealing with getting his ritalin refilled once, I’ve come to appreciate what a favor it is to have a script called or faxed in. (For ritalin, you have to go to the office, pick up a script, and take it to the pharmacy every single month. You can’t write refills on a ritalin script, apparently, nor can you call or fax it in. It’s a huge pain in the ass, frankly.)
We pay service charges on all sorts of other stuff for our own convenience, so why not called-in refills?
Of course, my scripts are written for 6 months, then I have to come get bloodwork done or I don’t get any more meds. So it wouldn’t really be an issue for me either way.