No, just me! (pretty long)

[marasbaras]

Well, we sometimes try calling doctors who want to be faxed. Either we get sent straight to voice mail, or the receptionist takes a note, and I have NEVER seen it sped things up. If the patient calls, that's a completely different story.

Well, there you go.

[radiocerk]

Instead of faxing...

Well, we sometimes try calling doctors who want to be faxed. Either we get sent straight to voice mail, or the receptionist takes a note, and I have NEVER seen it sped things up. If the patient calls, that's a completely different story.

[Bramblerose]

Three days seems slightly excessive for approval from the doctor's office on medication after writing the prescription. I can understand why the patient might be a tad annoyed.

I wouldn't put it past either Dr. office I had when last on insurance. She and her office mate needs to learn to say NO to new clients- it was always backed up in there. The good news was I got good service from the nurses in the one office, got squat from the other.

After those two awful years, I decided I would far rather get all my health from Planned Parenthood than any other office- PP has always been caring and timely! Pity I can't make this happen for real!

I think if I came home and found a message saying my prescription *wasn't* in yet, I might call the pharmacy manager and ask what brainless wonder in corporate came up with that brilliant plan.

[marasbaras]

Three days seems slightly excessive for approval from the doctor's office on medication after writing the prescription. I can understand why the patient might be a tad annoyed.

What would have happened if you'd called the doctor's office even though the file says fax-only?

[Evil Queen]

You poor dear. I heard it all before from friend in CT, pharmacies suck big time.

I don't recollect you, so welcome.

[allniter]

Just be blunt and tell her she's not special. Tell her the first 40 people on your Rx list actually are more special and so they get first dibs.

[radiocerk]

I work in a pharmacy. One of the things we do for people is fax their doctors when they're out of refills on their pills, so they don't have to see them. Most doctors get back to the pharmacy within a day or two. We can also advance a person a three day supply of a non-controlled, maintenance medication while we get that authorization.

So, I get this call this afternoon (about 6 pm on a Friday), from this very upset lady. Her medication hadn't gotten okay by the doctor, and we'd already advanced her pills that she was now out of.

First she wants to talk to our pharmacy manager, who isn't in tonight, so I decide to see what the problem is, so I can at least warn him. Apparently, she requested her medication "a week ago", which was actually three days ago. She was incensed that we hadn't called her doctor in person. I check the files, he only wants to be contacted by fax from the pharmacy. (Not unusual for doctors).

Then she tells me that she's upset that no one called her to tell her that her pills weren't ready. I tell her that our automated system would give her a call as soon as things ARE ready, that's how the system works. This doesn't work for her and she insists that we should have called her since her precription wasn't ready.

At this point, I tried logic with this lady. (Big mistake.) I reminded her that at any point, she is free to give us a call to see if her prescription is ready. That two days ago, when we gave her the emergency advance, she could have checked with her doctor to see if there was some hold up, and that it just wasn't sensical to call everyone who is waiting for an authorization, when the automated system calls people when their precriptions are ready.

At that point, (the end of the day, after we have gotten most of our authorizations), we still had 53 prescriptions that were waiting for authorization. I pointed out to her that finding time everyday to call each of these people would be difficult, and that she was the first person I had suggest that we call someone just to say that we didn't have their pills, without a specific problem or without needing specific information from them. (If we have trouble with their insurance, or a problem getting something, we call people.)

She didn't seem to understand where I was getting this "53 people" number, to my confusion. I finally understood when she all but shouted, " You don't have to call everyone, just me!" At that point, stifling my eye rolls and laughter, I told her my manager would be in tomorrow morning and that there was nothing we could do for her until we heard from her doctor.

Apparently, she called her doctor at home or something, her authorization came in about 7:30, ages after the offices close.

It just reminded me of this site so much.