Stop the Madness before someone gets HURT

After the last tech leaves for the day that's when the real fun begins. 

Cue the music HERE.

The Cosmic Rationale: 

* Someone will show up with multiple prescriptions that they need last minute. 
* One of your regulars wants advice on their bowel regimen.
* A father won't be able to find the infant Tylenol. 
* Vampires wearing their Goth outfits and sporting numerous piercings come in to pick up Neosporin.
* A lady visiting from out of town forgot her Lisinopril.
* People on their way home from work to pick up a prescription. And there's a good chance what they've come to pick up isn't on the shelf and it must be filled on the fly. 

It's not that these things don't happen during the rest of the day (except maybe for the vampires) but when you're running the pharmacy alone it doesn't take long for one little thing to back you up. Then the attitudes change and people get snippy. As long as you're speeding around taking care of everyone all is good, but once there's any kind of breakdown in the flow, THEY GET SNIPPY. I don't do well with snippy.

And as you can imagine, this is ANOTHER reason I hate GoodRx. Why just the other day I'm checking out a nice fellow on his new prescription for $13.75 on our in-house discount card. "Oh, I have a GoodRx coupon," he blurts out, fumbling for the computer-generated printout.

A person steps into line behind him... someone I told it would be 20 minutes to fill their prescription. It's been 10 minutes. In another few minutes they'll be getting snippy.

Now if it were only a matter of scanning a barcode on the coupon and making the amount change at the register it wouldn't be a big problem. But it doesn't work that way. I must reverse the transaction, type in the GoodRx coupon like it is insurance (BIN, PCN, Group, ID: all time consuming and tedious) THEN submit it just like it was insurance. The computer prints another label which I have to run back to the printer and get. This is NOT an easy process, people.

On my way back to the register I see another person now staring at me from the DROP OFF window.

With GoodRx guy, the new amount is $11.61. He's stunned! "Where's my 80% savings?", he asks. So then we have to have a discussion about what "up to 80%" means. Thanks, GoodRx, for giving people the idea they're going to save 80% every stinking time.

Now another person has stepped into line at the pick up window. It's like a tennis match with several pairs of eyes all on me as I move about the pharmacy.

I can handle a certain amount of pressure. Most pharmacists can handle it without a problem. But when it gets turned up a few notches, that's when the mistakes happen. In a fury to keep up with demand, wrong prescriptions are filled. Miscounts are common. Mistakes happen. Thank God none of my mistakes have ever been serious. But it happens... and anything that adds to the pressure of the situation... that makes it worse. 

GoodRx makes it worse. Every time.

If YOU don't think for a minute that all this pressure to enter prescriptions, fill, sell, fill, enter prescriptions, and run around like a crazy man just to save a whopping $2.14 doesn't make sense, then YOU just don't get it. If you don't see how GoodRx creates a situation that's ripe for disaster, YOU just don't get it. Someone, somewhere, someday is going to die because of a pharmacy mistake due to pressure caused by this GoodRx nonsense.