Prescription Mayhem
15th June 2011 | Drama, Life | 0 comments
On Tuesday, 7 June 2011, my daughter and I left the motel and headed to Annapolis for my monthly doctor appointment. After the doctor appointment, we got back into the van and headed to the Target Pharmacy in Bowie to get my prescription filled. We walked into Target and headed to the Pharmacy. When it was my turn, I handed them the prescription. They checked to make sure they had it in stock, and told us it should be ready in 20 to 30 minutes, around 2:30 p.m.
We then left Target and headed to my daughter’s 3 p.m. doctor appointment in Crofton. After the doctor’s appointment, we went back to Target to drop off the new prescriptions and pick up the one I left earlier. When we get to the pharmacy, I was informed that my prescription was NOT ready. Not ready! Why not? It had been at least 2-1/2 hours since we dropped it off. The Pharmacy Technician informed me that the insurance company had rejected payment of my prescription because of the amount of Tylenol it contained. While we were waiting for my daughter’s prescriptions to be ready, we went to get something cheap to eat. I wanted ice cream as it had been a while since I had any from Dairy Queen. I absolutely love soft-serve ice cream! We sat at the mall while we ate our ice cream and waited for the prescriptions to be ready.
After the allotted time, we went back to Target Pharmacy to pick up the other prescriptions. My daughter’s two prescriptions were ready, but somewhat expensive. I questioned the cost as I expected it to have no out-of-pocket cost. They had used the wrong insurance company, even though I had tried to give the Pharmacy Technician my daughter’s prescription card. The Pharmacy Technician told me they already had the information. It is also recorded in our records that one particular insurance company should be used first. The pharmacist said she didn’t know what insurance company was used. She informed me she doesn’t fill prescriptions. She just checks them. I wondered what the pharmacist was being paid to check or what she was even doing there if she didn’t have anything to do with the filling of prescriptions. I thought filling prescriptions was the job of the pharmacist. Obviously not!
If she was being paid to check prescriptions, why didn’t she catch the fact that the wrong insurance company was being billed? Maybe that’s not what she checks either. If the Pharmacy Technicians did all the work, why was the pharmacist getting paid more money when she didn’t do anything but stand around checking prescriptions? How boring! How unfair to the Pharmacy Technicians! They should be the ones making more money than the pharmacists, not the other way around. I wonder if all the pharmacists just “check prescriptions.”
Since the Pharmacy Technicians were busy, the pharmacist came over to wait on us. I informed the pharmacist that the wrong insurance company was used. If she only checked the prescriptions after the technicians filled them, why didn’t she catch this? Didn’t she read the record and see what insurance company was to be billed? Isn’t she getting paid to make sure the technicians are doing EVERYTHING correctly? Or is she getting paid to make sure they can count the number of pills that go into the bottle? Hm. If the pharmacy technicians can’t count, why do they work there? Why were they hired?
After informing her that the wrong insurance had been billed, she went behind the counter to make the appropriate changes. By this time, the pharmacy is packed. Yet the pharmacist is wasting even more time billing the insurance company that should have been billed in the first place.
When she brought the corrected prescriptions back to the counter, she mentioned the prescription that the insurance company denied because of the level of Tylenol. She accidently informed me it wasn’t the insurance company that raised the questions. It was her. She called the insurance company about the level of Tylenol in the pills and how she thought I was taking too much. She also informed me that Tylenol causes liver problems and I should be very concerned. I told her I was well-aware of that and was periodically (every 6 months) tested for any damage. Everything was tested through blood work to make sure I was OK. If it wasn’t, adjustments were made. She must think I’m stupid. Anyway, she decided to take it upon herself to inform the insurance company how much better she could do their job than they could. I wondered why she told me that she was the culprit behind the denial of the prescription payment. She made the Pharmacy Technicians look like liars, since they told me something entirely different. I would think they would have been taught to back each other up, not contradict each other. Why didn’t the pharmacist tell the technicians the truth? Why make them look like fools?
I told her that I had just received 48 shots in my back and was told by the doctor to take my pain medicine for the pain the shots would cause me. I would no longer be able to do that. Why? Because she took it upon herself to call the insurance company and now they would not pay for it. On top of that, it would be days before the prescription would be available to me. I asked her what she thought would happen to me now that she just stopped my prescription after I had been taking it for several years. She proceeded to tell me how I would get the shakes, sweat, freeze, get agitated, and irritable. I wasn’t worried about that. I was more concerned about going into cardiac arrest or having a heart attack from her abruptly stopping the medicine without the doctor’s approval. Who would take care of my daughter? My daughter has no one else but me. She said that wouldn’t happen. I disagreed with her. I’ve known people to have heart attacks when they weren’t weaned off the medicines properly.
I asked her about the Patient Education Paper that Target Pharmacy includes with your prescription. I informed her that it warns, “If using this medicine for an extended period of time, DO NOT SUDDENLY STOP taking this medicine without your doctor’s approval.” Why did it have that warning if I didn’t have anything to worry about? Why was part of the warning in big, black letters if it didn’t mean anything and/or wasn’t important. Why include the statement at all? Was it there to cause heart attacks in some people who would panic over the statement warning? Some people take these Patient Education papers to heart and worry about the side effects or won’t take the medicine because they are scared of the side effects and don’t want to go through them.
She had absolutely no answer for the statement on the Patient Education paper. She couldn’t even tell me why the statement was there. I informed her that I thought it was so people didn’t suddenly stop taking the medication and that there could be dire circumstances if they did stop suddenly. She had absolutely no answer. It was obvious from her look that she hadn’t thought through the consequences.
Target doesn’t want to be held responsible, yet she was taking the responsibility and/or risk into her own hands like the statement didn’t mean anything. I asked her why she didn’t discuss her concerns with me first. Or why didn’t she call the doctor’s office and talk to them about her concerns. She didn’t have an answer for that either. I honestly don’t think she put any thought into her actions. I think she just decided to pick up the phone and make that call without any thought to the consequences until I pointed them out. I don’t have a problem with her Tylenol concern. I have a problem with her not getting all the facts before she took action. I firmly believe she should have discussed this with me first. She has no idea why I am taking this medicine or what my medical condition is. She automatically jumped to conclusions about something she knows nothing about.
As it all turned out, the doctor’s office justified the amount of Tylenol I was taking and the insurance company approved the paying of the medicine. All she ended up doing was inconveniencing everyone. She cost the doctor’s office money when the staff could have been working on things that were more important. She also wasted the insurance company’s time while they researched the medicine I was taking, how often they were paying for it, and the conversations back and forth with my doctor’s office.
As I mentioned above, the pharmacy was now packed. There were long lines of people waiting to be helped. We had already been there for well over an hour and a half and this was our second visit of the day. The pharmacist brought over our prescriptions and another one was wrong. By this time, I was getting angry. It was now 6 p.m. and we had been there since 3:45 p.m. trying to collect and pay for our prescriptions. I asked the pharmacist if she was going to be done any time soon. One of the customers told me to leave the pharmacist alone so she could do her job. I turned around and told her to mind her own business. She wasn’t there the whole time to observe the entire situation. I informed the customer that I wouldn’t be so impatient if the pharmacist would do her job. Another customer decided to put in her “two-cents’ worth” informing us that the pharmacist had been helping us the whole time. That was so NOT true. My daughter turned around and informed the customer that we were homeless and didn’t want to make another trip back out here with the cost of gas. The customer told my daughter that our being homeless wasn’t the pharmacist’s fault. No one ever said it was. My daughter is sick and being there as long as we had been was virtually wearing her out to the point she could barely stand.
With that, the pharmacist finally brought us the last prescription. She rang everything up, we paid, and left. What started out to be close to $150 in prescription costs was now only $30. Too bad we couldn’t have cut down the amount of time we were there too.
In closing, the doctor’s office called the insurance company. The insurance company thoroughly agreed with the doctor’s office on the amount of Tylenol in the medicine. The insurance company paid for the prescription, as usual.
