Are handwritten prescriptions really still common in the US?
BTW the situation of the OP looks puzzling for me, customers in the country (US) famed for customer service putting up with it. German pharmacy customers would definitely raise a stink if they did not get a drug that doesn’t need to be backordered directly in the same counter interaction.
When I get a prescription it’s on the order of
“hello” ::hands over prescription (which also carries the insurance information):: ::tap tap tap:: It’s on stock. Just a moment please. ::rumble:: Here you are. Do you know how to take it?
One first thing in the morning, thanks, I have been taking it for years now. That’s 5 € copay, then. Do you need anything else?
No, thanks. :: pays & exits ::
First time I ever bought medicine at an American Pharmacy, I remember wondering if the pharmacists was sitting in the back making my drugs by hand with a mortar and pestle. It was the only explanation I could think of for why it was taking them so damn long.
The best I’ve managed in Britain was a couple of minutes. As it was quiet and the prescription was only an inhaler, the procedure appeared to be take it off the shelf, put the details into the computer to print labels, then wander around for some time looking for somebody to double-check it.
Normally it’s more like 10-30 minutes, and yeah, no insurance companies to blame.
I’m a Pharmacist Intern working at Rite Aid, I would have posted earlier but I just got back from a bad day at work. Looks like chaoticbear answered about as well as I could, but let me add a few things.
Today I worked from 2pm till 7:30, here are some of the things that happened today: The pharmacist was late getting back from lunch, because he had to go to another location down the street and give someone a shot, so we were 30 minutes backed up when he got there. The Insurance went down, so we could not process any insurance claims for a long while, so we got backed up even more. So by the time I left at 7:30, we still had over 20 scripts in the queue waiting to be filled. We were way behind what we where we were suppose to be, so people were coming back before it was ready, this pushed us to get that script filled, which interrupted what we were doing before hand.
One problem lately is that pharmacies are trying to cut payroll, so they keep cutting tech hours, as the tech hours get cut, any little hiccup can put us behind for the day, and then it just snowballs from there.
Plus, EVERYONE always comes or calls at once, we will have no one in the store for 30 minutes, then 10 people will walk up in less then 10 minutes. The person who got there first had a 15 minute wait, the person who came in last, had an hour wait. So a big part of it is timing. If it is a refill (so we don’t have to type the script), we can count it, label it, and have the pharmacist check it in less then 5 minutes. If it is a new script, and everything goes without trouble, we can have it done in about 7 or 8 minutes. Now, that is only if we do nothing else, we don’t get distracted (I HATE the drivethru), there is no one infront of you, and there is no trouble with it.
One time I went in to pick up a refill that had supposedly been ordered through Rite-Aid’s automated refill service, except that when I asked for it at the pick up window they didn’t have any record of it. It happened to be something that was pre-packaged so all they had to do was print up a label and slap in on the bottle. So that’s what they did; total elapsed time, five minutes.
I don’t buy it. One of the many jobs I had in my checkered past was as a stockroom technician at one of the large Jersey pharmaceutical companies. We had tens of thousands of chemicals in our stockroom, almost all of them unique, with thirty-syllable names. Our inventory was accurate enough that if a chemist asked for a particular chemical and we had it, we would find the bottle within seconds.
The piece of paper and cash to pill transaction should happen immediately, there should be not contact with prescribing doctors, insurers, law enforcement.
Security and order is an inconvenience in a busy life.
They should become less common. Medicare is paying a bonus for using electronic prescriptions. After 2012, there will be a reimbursement cut for those who haven’t changed over.
Whatever is causing your delay, it’s not because you’re in Canada, or at least that is not my experience in Saskatchewan. My general experience has been about 15 minutes, maybe a little less, maybe a little more.
You forgot another factor: the elderly woman who always seems to be right in front of me in line, who is slightly demented and hard of hearing, is not sure whether her meds are here or in the pharmacy across the street, doesn’t remember whether she called in for a refill, can’t find her Medicare card, demands to know how much she’d be paying with a different insurance plan, and should she take her pill before or after meals, and will it give her gas, and can she take something for the gas too, and should she be taking a new med that she saw in a commercial, and why are her meds so expensive anyway, then she can’t find her checkbook or ID, and her pen doesn’t work, and can she also pay for all the groceries in her cart, and why don’t they have a scale to weigh her fruit, then decides to pay in cash and has to rummage through her purse to find all the loose change she’s been hoarding, that’s all sticky from her hard candies, and discovers she’s three cents short and wants to write a check after all, then she turns around to me and comments on how slow the help is in this store.
One practice I used to go to had pre-printed scripts for the most common drugs and dosages. If I needed Motrin, for example, the doc would just fill in the specifics, sign it and hand it over.
Also, pharmacies are some of the most anally-organized places in existence. Everything has a place and everyone knows where everything is. The idea is that anyone should be able to step in and find what they’re looking for quickly. When I’ve watched my father work, he’s got everything he needs within a few minutes and the packaging materials are within arm’s reach.
Yes, although I think the problem, from an efficiency point of view, isn’t the paper scrips, or the call in scrips or the faxed or web-based scrips - it’s that most pharmacies use all of them. So there always seems to be some back up of orders to be filled for people who aren’t physically in the store at the time. If the prescriptions to be filled were only for those physically present, there’s not much need for it to take a whole lot longer than getting your lunch at a fast food counter. (A little longer, for dealing with insurance and screwy orders, sure. But not a lot.)
My local pharmacies have increased their “estimated wait time” from 20 minutes to an hour in the last 10 years as they’ve increased their “convenient” options for ordering. I think they’d much rather you NOT bring in a paper scrip and breathe down their neck at this point. I try to have mine called or faxed in, and I wait at least an hour after the promised ready time before I go in to pick it up. Refills I order on the website for store pickup. With these methods, I’ve not had to wait in the store for more than 5 minutes.
I agree with “brilliant”. Definitely going to print this out and let the guys at work read it. (Well, girls - with the 25 people we have in our department (including OTC people), there is another male technician, but he works part time during the school year (every other Saturday), and one male pharmacist. And me. Rest all women lol.
I was going to point this out as well. I worked as a tech for five years, and for common things, I could find them blindfolded. Even with less common things, the system made it easy to find everything very quickly.
A comment on doctor’s handwriting, as well: it does sometimes look atrocious, but if you know what you’re looking for, it’s easier. Most people aren’t used to reading drug names all day, so the stuff looks worse than it is. I worked in a pharmacy in a small town, too, which helped. A huge majority of our prescriptions were from just a few practices. I got to know some of the handwriting as well as my own.
