These pharmacys are getting ridiculous. Kroger pharmacy’s machine took my refills at Sat three pm and gave me a pick up time of Sunday 3pm. :dubious: They close at 6pm Sat.
These places aren’t that darn busy. Theres at least 14 Kroger pharmacys in my city alone. My blood pressure patch comes in a box. Print a label and hand to me. Yes they still have to dispense pills and label the bottle.
I pressed the button and talked directly with the Pharmacist. He said no problem and they’d be ready in an hour.
That automated phone system is a POS.
My mom ran into that same crap with walgreens phone system. It’ll be ready the next day. That’s Bullshit. The pharmacist has them ready in an hour or two.
Then I suggest you don’t use the automated service anymore. I go directly to talking to someone if I don’t want to wait. That way my prescription is prioritized
I have handed my bottle to the pharmacist and then shopped for groceries while its filled. I try not to do that. It rushes them.
I usually call 4 or 5 hours before I’m going to Kroger. Today I got busy gardening and forgot. But still gave them three hours lead time.
The phone system used to be more friendly. It would ask if you needed the prescription today or tomorrow. Now its gotten nasty and just says get it tomorrow loser.
I get my prescriptions done at a local WalMart. I call them in to the automated service and the message tells me they’ll be ready the next day. But 99% of the time, I get an automated call back an hour or so later, telling me my prescription is ready.
Kroger presumably has a similar system. They expect to have prescriptions ready in a hour or so but their message says twenty-four hours to give them leeway for unexpected delays.
My HMO runs its own pharmacies, including a big centralized mail-order pharmacy, and they encourage us to get our pills by mail-order. They give a price break on the co-payment if we do that. The automated phone refill system is simple and efficient – it even remembers mailing address and credit card number so I don’t have to re-enter that each time. They promise delivery (by U.S.Mail) within 10 days, but it’s generally quicker than that. Long-term prescriptions can be up to 90 days at a time, if the doctor wrote it for that much. Refills can be re-ordered up to 2 weeks ahead of time or something like that. So it behooves the patient to watch that and order early.
I set out my pills for an entire week at a time, once a week. So I look into all the bottles then to keep an eye on when I’m running low. On top of that, every time I receive a bottle of pills in the mail, I figure when they will run out, and make a note 2 weeks before that on my calendar to re-order.
It all goes quite smoothly. (One of the relatively few good things I have to say about this HMO actually.)
ETA: I don’t know how it all works for all those paranoid meds that you have to have a top secret security clearance to get.
My dentist gave me, at my request, a free prescription for Metronidazole ( an antibiotic ) 3 days ago.
Two minutes after leaving the premises I was in a pharmacist handing over the prescription: less than two minutes later they gave me the tablets.
But then I live in England, where internet right-wing Americans assure me the National Health Service ensures long waiting periods and inferior service for all us slaves to socialism.
I switched all my mom’s prescriptions to Target’s pharmacy and signed up for their text alert system. Now I get a text saying that this or that prescription is ready to be refilled, do I want to do it now? Press one button to reply and within the hour I get a text saying it is ready. And usually this all happens before I even get out of bed! No more rummaging through her seven bottles and guesstimating whether I’ll get told it’s too early to place a refill.
Went to my doctor last Monday and he wrote me a prescription that was electronically sent to the pharmacy three blocks away. I decided to stop in the bathroom before heading to their drive thru, and got a text saying it was ready before I finished in bathroom! So the American system can be just as efficient! And that was at four in the afternoon, too. Of course they are open until ten and I don’t have to get out of the car.
I’m guessing that when automated systems give you a 24 hour pick up time, it’s “just in case”. Most of the time , when I drop off a prescription in person it’s ready within an hour or two. But pharmacies run out of stock on medications just like any other store, and sometimes I’m told they will have to order the medication and my prescription will be ready tomorrow. If you speak to a person, they will know if the medication is in stock, how many prescriptions are already waiting to be filled, how many staff are working, etc. When you’re dealing with a automated system, it can’t account for all of that. It has to either be silent as to pick up time ( and send a text/automated phone call when ready), give an average pick up time ( say an hour or two) or give a worst case pick up time (24 hours). Incorrectly promising an hour and having it actually take 24 will get more people mad than promising 24 hours and having it ready in an hour.
Kroger’s probably just automatically schedules it for 24 hours, in case there’s an issue or a store happens to be really, really busy. Some of the pharmacies here really do have a 24-hour lag time, because they’re that busy AND UNDERSTAFFED, the latter being the main issue.
I worked at a grocery store and a few other retail environments for several years, prior to all this electronic stuff, and we always liked it when people called in their refills a few days ahead of time. But someone who needed it now always got bumped to the front of the line.
Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) used Kroger, and they were okay. Had to wait and they were grudgingly helpful.
Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) used Walgreen’s for her Mother, and they fellated with great alacrity. They just want to make money.
I use the little guy my parent’s used, and I’m very happy with them.
The VA lets me request refills online. The system won’t allow me to request a refill prematurely so I don’t have to worry about that. The one doctor who prescribes my regular stuff writes for four refills (I see him every three months) so that’s not an issue, either.
Did you ask for a faster pickup? I used to use a Kroger pharmacy, and I’m sure you could request “immediate” (in 20 minutes) pickup. My practice was to request a refill, do my shopping, and pick up my medication.
I live in Canada and there’s a bizarre tendency towards wait times here, too. Actually, it’s hard to figure out what, exactly, the wait time for a prescription really is, because there’s wait-time price discrimination at the point of request:
ME: I’d like this prescription filled, please.
PHARMACIST: Alright, is tomorrow good to pick it up?
ME: No, it’s not.
PHARMACIST: Oh, Well, how about five hours from now?
ME: With respect, no.
PHARMACIST: We’ll have it ready in ten minutes!
I don’t know why they have to do this, because they sure don’t LOOK harried or overworked.
