The Pill Pushers!

[Rant]

I am mad… I usually don’t sound off about “things” but… yesterday was my birthday.

It started off with a phone call…

9:00 AM a call from my doctor's... take your meds!

10:00 AM a call from my insurance company ... take your meds!

11:00 AM pharmacy calls... take your meds!

1:30 pharmacy calls... take your meds!

I don’t know if it was my birthday that triggered the calls but they set me off! And you know what, not one of the callers asked if I was taking my meds... it was a statement: "You have to take your meds"

You see pill orders are issued by a computer… it tells the clerk to count out this number of pills and stick this label on it. It has no bearing on when you last picked up the pills! Ding! This date do this. Being human you forget once in a while, I figure that I have about a 90% medication-taking rate. But you slip. But the computer doesn’t. So by the end of the year’s prescription you might be off by two weeks. But the computer goes “Ding” and out pops another 90-day supply.

So this spring I pick up my fourth prescription of the year. But two weeks later the computer went “Ding” and ordered another 3-month supply. If I picked up the order I would have had just about a 6-month supply.

So now the calls start. “You are not taking your medication”

One time when I complained to a clerk… she just told me to throw out the rest of the prescription and pick up the new one. So she told me to throw out $800 of meds so that they can keep their books straight!

Before I retired… I worked making nuclear plants… safety was #1. There was this form called a 10CFR21. CFR stood for Code of Federal Regulations and I was required by law if I found a safety hazard to report it… it could be a criminal offense!

So if I was going to write one for the pharmacy:

Safety violation #1: Automatic refills ** do** not check if multiple prescriptions of that drug are open. This causes a possible dose reduction for a new prescription for the same drug but at a different dose being mixed up.

Safety violation #2: Automatic refills are not based on the actual purchase but are refilled on anniversary dates. This causes the possibility of taking multiple doses of the same drug.

[/Rant]