"Thank you for calling Goofmart Pharmacy, home of the painless flu shot. This is Crazy RxMan, how may I help you be well today?"
"I just opened my bottle of Ly-sint-toe-pril. It looks different. Is it different now?" she asked.
"Ok, let me get on the computer. What's your date of birth?"
I get the patient info and pull her profile up on the computer. I scroll down, and down, and down. There isn't any lisinopril on her profile.
"Mrs. Cordoba, I don't see lisinopril on your profile. What is the Rx number?" I ask.
"It is 1001-03394-304930-493941-19343," she replied. I might be exaggerating there. I just remember it was a long number that went on forever.
"Yes."
"Does it say 'Goofmart Pharmacy' anywhere on the bottle?" I ask, just to make sure our company didn't send it to her.
"No."
"How would I know what's in the bottle? Why didn't you call the people who sent you the bottle?" I ask, annoyed. I'm trying to fill 287 prescriptions all at the same time and I sure as heck don't have time for this phone call.
Silence.
Mrs. Cordoba doesn't know what to say, and for good reason. She's asking ME to identify a medication we didn't fill for her. And she doesn't want to call the pharmacy that did. That's freaking annoying.
"Mrs. Cordoba, bring the bottle by the pharmacy. We'll take a look at the tablets to make sure what's actually in there if we can. No promises, though, ok?"
"Ok," and she hangs up.
So mail order, you masterful wizards, you've sure got a great thing going for you. You take away our pharmacy business but leave the counseling up to us. That's just great, you sleaze lords.
Buttheads.
Same problem with online eyewear. I can't tell you how many people come in with glasses they bought online and can't see/be comfortable in them. And, they want ME to troubleshoot and adjust them. Yeah - it's not worth PAYING me for my expertise, they'll just freeload on my customer service.
ReplyDeleteI can understand your frustration, Crazy. I work in mail order, and we make it as easy as we can for patients to talk to us (and our prescription numbers are only 9 digits long). Some people are just too lazy to dial a few extra digits or too stupid to realize that all pharmacies are not interconnected as one big pissed-off, dysfunctional family. If Mrs Dumb A$$ would look at the material that came with her prescription and the bottle label, she could most likely figure out that it is indeed the correct medication and we even tried to bring it to her attention with a sticker on the bottle. Oh wait, reading...that's kind of like work...much easier to just call someone. And you are smart enough to know that the only reason mail order exists is because of the greed of the pharmaceutical companies that drove the insurers and employer groups to look for less expensive alternatives to supply medications to patients. I won't take offense at the name calling because I know it was said in the heat of the moment. We are all just small cogs in the big Rube Goldberg machine known as modern healthcare. God (and Donald Trump) help us all.
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