It Makes Imperfect Sense

An Interesting Encounter

Let’s be real.  Really real.  At some point, you have to take responsibility for your own life, health care, too.  It only takes one customer to drive a point home and remind you to practice patience…because you can’t always say what comes to mind first.  Take this “exchange” as a prime example.

A customer comes to the drive-thru.  She’s just planning to pick up a refill of a prescription she called in the previous morning, so it makes sense that it would take very little time to complete her transaction, but, it just doesn’t work that way every time.  Here, I’ll break it down for you.

*I’ll make up the names as we go along.  You know, HIPAA is a real thing.

Ms. Sharon calls the pharmacy.  She has just recently transferred all her prescriptions to us.  She tells the tech she would like to get a refill on HER Vitamin D.  This is a medication she always gets in a 90 day supply, so it’s been 3 months since her last pick up.  The tech brings up her patient profile on the computer screen, locates HER Vitamin D prescription, and notes that she does not have any refills left on that prescription.  Standard practice for the pharmacy is to send an electronic request; this is done automatically by the system, to the prescribing doctor of record.  So, the tech tells Ms. Sharon that an automatic electronic request will be sent to HER prescriber to ask for refills of the HER Vitamin D, and the prescription will be filled when the refill request is granted.  Now, Ms. Sharon wants to know if she will be able to pick up the prescription the following day.  That’s a tough question since there is no way to know when/if the doctor will get back to the pharmacy with his answer, but, as any good tech would do, Ms. Sharon is given this information and, most likely, told she can call in before stopping by to see what progress the pharmacy has made with her order. 

Ms. Sharon chooses to skip the phone call and head to the pharmacy directly.  This is where the lesson begins.

Upon arriving at the pharmacy drive-thru window, Ms. Sharon gives her name and lets the tech (ok, it was me) know what she has come to pick up a refill.  Side note, I am not the tech who took the refill order, but that doesn’t really matter in this scenario.  Procedure is procedure, so it would have played out in a similar fashion no matter which tech was working the drive-thru when she arrived.  Her name is entered into the system, and her file is retrieved.  No refill is found.  HER Vitamin D is not waiting for her.  How has this happened?  As it turns out, Ms. Sharon didn’t mention, when calling in her refill, that the prescribing doctor of record was NO LONGER HER DOCTOR, and, in fact, lived in another state.  Ms Sharon hadn’t seen her previous doctor since moving to her new home in PA.  It would seem realistic to most people that a doctor (who is no longer YOUR doctor) would not authorize a refill for a patient who is NO LONGER HIS PATIENT, but it didn’t make sense to Ms Sharon.  Let’s imagine a 5 minute scenario where Ms Sharon lets me know how unhappy she is that we (I) did not get her refill authorized.

Now, Ms Sharon, who is building up a head of steam, informs me that she has 2 new local doctors, and had the pharmacy called her to let her know her request had been rejected by her old doctor; she’d have given us the info for her new doctors.  We had just wasted HER time by contacting her old doctor, the doctor of record, to get her refill.  The problem with Ms Sharon’s solution is that neither of her new doctors had ever prescribed Vitamin D for her.  There was no prescription on record from either of them, therefore, there is nothing for us to call in to refill.  Her situation would require HER to call her new doctors and ask them to send a NEW prescription for HER Vitamin D to the pharmacy.  Note to self, to make it a less stressful situation for herself, it might have been best for Ms Sharon to make those arrangements before taking the last Vitamin D from her previous prescription and putting herself in a situation where she was without any medication as this issue was being resolved.  But, Ms Sharon is convinced that the pharmacy is responsible for the situation she now finds herself in.  Truly convinced.  And, absolutely determined to make me understand how the pharmacy is responsible.

We’ll skip the lengthy conversation that followed.  Suffice it to say, Ms Sharon truly sees this as a failing on the part of the pharmacy.  There is nothing I can say at this moment to make her understand that it would make perfect sense that her old doctor would not grant the refill request, that calling in before arriving at the pharmacy would have saved her the trip (and made her aware of the situation she needed to resolve), and that the pharmacy wouldn’t be able to contact either of her new doctors to ask them to write a new prescription for her.  There is no way to convince her that things would have gone smoothly if she’d have contacted one of her new doctors, before swallowing her last pill, to request they send a NEW prescription for Vitamin D to the pharmacy, because she was running low.  Ms Sharon was dead set on laying full blame on the pharmacy.  She even let me know that she was going to write a note about the situation so there would be a record of what transpired should she die in her sleep because we did not have her prescription for her.   I must take a moment to note that: 

            1:  Her medication was not life saving.

            2:  Her medication could be purchased over-the-counter.

            3:  I offered to get a pharmacist for her to speak with to see

                 if there was a temporary solution to her problem.

After chastising me one last time, Ms Sharon left in a huff.  

I don’t know what Ms Sharon decided to do once she left the pharmacy.  She might have made a note to call one of her new doctors to get a new prescription.  She might have written a complaint to the corporation.  She might have realized it was ultimately her responsibility to have her ducks in a row when it comes to the timely refill of her medication.  Maybe I’ll find out eventually.  Maybe I won’t.  In either case, it’s a learning experience for me.  One that I hope will lead me to better resolutions in the future. 

Main point: YOUR healthcare is YOUR responsibility first. 

Second point:  I DO want you to be satisfied when you leave the pharmacy, but there are only so many things I am able to do to make that happen. 

Third point:  Figure out a way to prevent this in the future if possible. 

Fourth and Final Point:  Tomorrow is another day.

Don’t forget to take your Happy Pill.