It Never Ends

Sometimes, I just can't imagine the days I have at work.

Two days ago, a regular, let's call her Amy Irrirating, drops off a prescription for her kid. Now, she literally takes 100 mg of Paxil a day, in tandem with a few other similar drugs at equally high doses, and it's a wonder she can even have any type of feelings at this point. So, she came through my drive-thru, chatting a mile a minute on her cell phone, and just thrust her kid's prescription at me through the window. I know the patient's in my computer, so I didn't bother to get any other info, and since she was practically yelling (people over 40 never seem to realize you don't have to yell to be heard on a cell phone, no offense to anyone over 40 who is sane and realizes this), I wanted her out, so I asked when she was going to pick it up. She ignores me. I ask again, and she puts on a pained expression, holds her phone up by her shoulder, and flashes me a "2-0" with her fingers. How rude! She drove off before I could say anything else. When I glance down at the rx -- cefdinir. 1 & 1/2 tsp qd x 10 days. NO STRENGTH. Argh. I give her a call -- no answer. Leave a message. She comes back in about a half hour. It's been lunch at the doctors' since she dropped off, so we couldn't get ahold of them. She gives my co-tech a terrible time at the window. Is it our fault you stopped us from correctly serving you by ignoring us? Finally, we got it taken care of, and she ambles down about 2 hours later. My pharmacist in charge told me we no longer have to wait on people if they're going to do that -- we'll just tell them we'll be happy to help them once they've ended their call -- and her two bosses already told us before that that's more than appropriate.

Yesterday, I answer a call from a local SuperChain. It's like a Walmart-type of store, but on a slightly smaller scale. The pharmacist tells me he wants to transfer me a prescription in, so I pass it to my pharmacist. Turns out, the patient lived near us, but had never been to us. Okay, we get all the info we need off them, including insurance, and we process the Factive-5 prescription. For starters, who writes for Factive?! It's never covered for less than $40. That price is exactly this patient's total. As I ruminated over the debate to order vs. not to order (since I basically do inventory at work, too), it hit me -- that irritating rep who stops in every 2 or so months that didn't leave us alone until I got the box in and showed him we'd given in and ordered his stupid drug, yeah, he gave me a few coupons. With just a moment or two in our coupon drawer, I found what I was looking for -- a Factive coupon for $50 off, still in date until April. I reprocessed his claim, and BAM! No copay. $0. SuperCPhT* saves him 40 bucks.

The guy comes in about an hour later. The other tech waited on him. He was very weirded out that we had his Cigna information on file. She politely explains that the SuperStore pharmacist wanted us to have it ready, since he didn't think it would take very long for this patient to come in. Then, she explains that the $0 copay was due to me finding a coupon and saving him $40, and instead of him being grateful, he started freaking out. "I've NEVER had a copay for $40. Something MUST be wrong!" We told him, "It doesn't matter. Nobody prescribes this drug for that reason, but we saved you $40, and you get it for FREE!" "Oh. Cool," he replies. No thank you's, no sorry's for his outburst. Nothing. I'm a nice person who, contrary to complaints to my supervisors over following the law and not giving out new/transferred rx giftcards to seniors on Medicare that I'm "scamming them", isn't out to screw the patient. I try to go above and beyond -- not because the CorpoPharmacy suits want me to do it, but because I'd want somebody to do that for me. These kind of things kind of make me scratch my head, and wonder why I try sometimes. It prompted me to clean out my coupons, at least. We only have a singular Factive coupon, and some Akurza Lotion/Cream coupons that we'll never use, left over. Hopefully, next time I decide to be nice and use these things, the patients will be a little more appreciative. I mean, hey -- I could've easily charged the guy $40.

I Live!

An update! Finally! I've been busy absorbing my greatness at gaining the CPhT title, as well as taking a well-deserved vacation. In the past 2 weeks, I've worked a total of 5 out of 14 days. Not shabby!

The beginning of the year has gone fairly smooth. I've not had too many expired insurance policies popping up. I also haven't seen too many insurance lines going down yet. My single complaint is that it appears that approximately a quarter of my patients who have coverage through plans served by Medco have varied from the 1000000000001-style ID numbers, and now have ID numbers starting with 600, and some weird group number that ends in PDP, and they aren't even Medicare plans. None of these Medco plans with these weird ID numbers and group numbers have sent out their new cards, it appears, because everyone we dealt with in the past 2 days said they'd received such cards. All I have to say, though, is that the Medco hotline has a great automated system to deal with this.

Honestly, as I've been out of the game for so long, I really don't have much to say. I'm sure the next few weeks will garner many more amusing anecdotes to post, but for now, I guess I'm done.