Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Your birth date?

Lady: "I want to fill a prescription."

Me: "Ok, what is your birth date?"

Lady: "August 25, 1971."

Me: "Ok, I have no one with that birth date on my computer. I'll have to add you in..."

Lady: "Oh, it's not for me. It's for my husband..."

You have absolutely NO IDEA how often this happens.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep...even happens on calls to the dr. A lady will get halfway through her spiel and give me HER dob....then at the end says...no, it's for my (husband,son,nephew...etc) drives me nuts!

Pharmaciststeve said...

Maybe your question should be ..what is the patient's birthday"?

Hildy said...

Well you did ask for HER birth date.

Anonymous said...

I don't think the Rxman did anything unusual here. ANYONE would naturally presume ther person is asking for a refill for his or herself when they answered WITH THEIR OWN BIRTHDATE. The Rxman said the lady said, "I want to fill a prescription." By saying the word "I" that immediately gives the presumption that it was for her. If you want such specifics, then SHE should have said, "My HUSBAND wants to refill a prescription."

If I was asking for a refill for my daughter AND I had never filled a prescription at the pharmacy before I would IMMEDIATELY KNOW that the pharmacist was assuming I was the patient. I wouldn't answer with my birthdate. Duh, that would be stupid.

This attitude is typical of what IS so wrong and GOING wrong in our nation. Now, everything has to be spoon-fed. People are no longer capable of thinking on their own. No one has their own insurance information, no one wants to pay a co-pay. Let's redistribute all wealth and impose cradle to grave government intrustion into everything. Then we can all have barcodes tattooed on our wrists and we won't have to do any thinking at all. Just scan the wrist and get your refill.

I'm a pharmacist at CVS. When I call a Walgreens for a transfer, I get routed to a call center where they immediately ask for my name. I'm NOT a patient, I'm a pharmacist, so I don't blindly answer with my name and wait for the call center person with the British-Indian accent to figure out what is going on. I stop him or her and say, "I need to talk to the store for a transfer." Simple. No "duh" awkward moments.

Jeez, people. Figure it out.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I usually say "what is the date of birth?" and I *still* get responses like above. Or even better, "do you want mine or his/hers?" Why would you think I would want yours?!