Saturday, October 29, 2011
Is there anyone else who would like me to do their Job?
We just got word that two of the biggest pharmaceutical chains as well as the national organization of pharmacists will no longer fill any prescription that does not have the quantity on it. The reason, they dont want to be responsible for having to figure out the quantity and therefore be responsible for any errors. This is on top of the fact that almost none of them will do any coumpounding. Where this is an issue is that many medications come in different doses and forms. These very big time in price. A classic is prednisone. 5 mg tabs are the same price as 10 mg tabs. So a patient can ask the pharmacist for the 10s and take 1/2 and save 50 %. Of course, the pharmacists does not ever want to substitute a suspension for the tablet because they have to do math. The governement wants us to eprescribe so they can keep track of all the scripts and your personal information. Part of this is that the script goes straight to the pharmacy instead of the patient. The result, the patient cant call around to see who has the best price! In our area, some of the smaller non chain pharmacies beat the others by a substantial amount. This is a big deal for those in the donut hole! I guess pharmacists just want us to be sure we send electronic scripts so they can charge the most, not have to be responsibe, while the government wants us to be their stool pigeons and rat out our pateints.
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1 comment:
But ...what about HIPAA? HIPAA_SCHMIPAA I guess.
I thought pharmacists were the ones to figure out quantity and actually catch errors, etc.
I never knew to to shop around for best local pharmacy deals until I read your blog. I assumed Walmart would be the cheapest in our area, but the staff was continually mixing up orders, not processing phone in orders directly from my physician's mouth and became horribly slow. It was the med mistakes that most concerned me. I should clarify it was a staff issue and not the store ...although I did hear the way they cut back on things did negatively impact the way the pharmacy ran ..AND the staff was not good. Nice ...but ...something wrong for sure.
I do use one local store pharmacy and the best service ever! that being said ...our ins company makes it so that if not generic available ..HAVE to get through MEDCO or will cost more. I feel very sorry for the people who fall into the donut hole you speak of because meds are expensive.
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