Thursday, November 12, 2015

A Close Shave in the Pharmacy

This is not a post about morals and what's right. I know what's right and wrong, but I work in the Twilight Zone:

Man, age 50 something, with an active prescription for Cialis. Same man insists that his "file" be tagged with the following, "DO NOT LET WIFE PICK UP MEDICATION." Same man has spoken to me personally about said request. Request has been logged for quite awhile, but he brings it up every time he comes in. The last time I actually turned the monitor around and showed him the words on his "file." Same man looked satisfied (no pun intended) with the situation at that point.

This same man is a cliche for the old joke: He gets it refilled just prior to going out of town. This time it was no different... told us he was going "out of town" and needed a refill. Same man left the store without picking up the prescription we filled for him in 3.5 minutes. That's no big deal to us... we just keep it on the shelf.

Two days later the phone rings. It is the man's wife, wanting to know what prescription is waiting FOR HER at the pharmacy. The tech goes to the will-call and determines that there is no prescription FOR HER and by a pure stroke of luck doesn't say anything about the prescription of Cialis waiting there for her husband... which would have likely happened under different circumstances. Our computer automatically calls people when the prescription is not picked up in two days with a reminder call. The man's "file" has the same phone number as his wife and the computer was trying to call HIM, not HER. The tech very easily could have said, "No, we don't have anything for you, but there's a script for Cialis for your husband." Then all private healthcare protection information laws would have gone to hell in a hand basket. I can only imagine the lawsuits that would have come from that one sentence. Personally I'd like to see the cheating bastard get his due, but because of the law I have to keep his secrets.

Definitely a close shave. Phew!



This blog post is a rerun. It originally appeared HERE.

2 comments:

was1 said...

isn't having a computer make a phone call like that just a HIPAA violation waiting to happen? even if the name of the drug is not stated in the phone call, whoever gets that call is likely to call back out of curiosity. i'd turn that little feature off.

Anonymous said...

Wife clearly doesn't suspect husband. Had I gotten a call from the pharmacy, I'd have gone there to see what prescription(s) were waiting. But then, I suspect husband wants to be caught. Otherwise, he'd take some precautions rather than using the family pharmacy with auto notify in place.