Follow up on my CVS story–I got an email survey from CVS after I went to get pain medication for H, which wasn’t available for two days. I think most of my answers were in the 4-5 category (on a 1-10 scale). To my surprise, I got an email today from CVS with an apology for not having the medication. Also, email said if I wanted to speak to the pharmacist about my complaint, I should list a day and time that I would be available and the pharmacist would call me. I guess not having medications must be an issue for them. I give CVS credit for responding.
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My heart rate just went to aerobic levels reading your response. That is precisely what happened to H recently. He had knee replacement surgery. The prescription is written as take 1-2 tablets every 2-4 hours as needed. He got a count of 60. Quick math will tell you that taken at the highest allowed dose (which is perfectly reasonable for the first week or so) you run out of tablets 2.5 days. First refill attempt - the pharmacy tells us - not time for a refill. Okay, doc overrides. Now pharm says insurance won’t cover so we didn’t fill. I say OKAY. I Pay. They say - okay it will be ready tomorrow. UM. HE is greenish grey NOW and needs this stuff.
Next refill, we’re told, you just refilled this…doc gets involved. Takes the better part of the day. But now Costco pharmacy doesn’t have any Oxy. Don’t know when they will get it. Something about a pharmacy is actually limited to the number of pills it can dispense in a certain amount of time. So - please transfer to Walgreens.
Oh HolY Cow Muck… NOW we are in the ‘pharmacy shopping’ category. 6+ hours of back and forth between doc, Walgreens and Costco. Finally doc says ‘I spoke with the pharmacy - they are filling the prescription right now’. It takes me 10 minutes to get there…and…wait for it…wait for it…the pharmacy says they haven’t filled it because they need to hear from the doctor. (this had been a problem several times when I tried to fill just a regular drug - the kind that doesn’t make the FDA/DEA heads explode. Somehow Walgreens never gets the request…hmm).
At this point I am close to tears. I tell the pharmacist I will need to call the fire department because H can no longer get up and be mobile enough to do the basics of life. And, frankly…I could just go to one of the many homeless encampments and score him some until they figure out what to do! (No, I wouldn’t actually have done that). A few more minutes and suddenly my name is called (ahead of the 8+ other people who were furiously mulling around). And I get the danged pills.
talk about burying the lede. The operative word is ‘Oxy’, and given what has been going on with drug abuse, such things are highly controlled, adn yes, can be in short supply… been that way for a while.
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Compassion for others seems to be in short supply. How about validating the frustrations that others are experiencing versus coldly explaining status of meds. A little can go a long way IMO. Especially when one is watching a loved one go through complicated recoveries and waiting times are meaningful.
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Bcos the title of this thread is about pharmacies being a “nightmare”; just pointing out that there might be good and valid business and legal reasons for that to appear to be the case, particularly with controlled substances. Many such reasons predate the impact covid has had on the health care delivery.
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OxyContin is a very effective pain reliever. Unfortunately it’s been abused and the fallback has been severe So that those who actually need it feel they are being questioned or severely rationed.
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Wow. I truly hope you or anyone close to you doesn’t have to go thru this process. Not only does the legal process make the patient feel ‘dirty’…this attitude does the same.
BTW…pharmacies inability to effectively receive communications would fall under the ‘nightmare’ scenario. If it helps…it took me over a week to get a thyroid medication via Walgreens - because they ‘never heard back from the doctor’.
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I was just about to post this! looks like they’re about to restructure CVS and get rid of a bunch of locations. I wonder if the above has anything to do with it.
I didn’t think @bluebayou was being unsympathetic or judging. It’s just a very unfortunate fact that Oxy now has a really bad rap owing to the rampant abuse of it. And I have argued for years that the reaction to this misuse is unfairly harming those that need it legitimately to control severe, chronic pain. I also think that doctors who were legitimately helping people in pain were at times unfairly targeted. Many people are dependent on narcotic pain relievers not as an addiction, but as a way to make day to day life livable. Dependency is not the same thing as abuse. So I have incredible sympathy for those trying to acquire pain meds.
These two things lie side by side: the intractable addiction problem that has led to many thousands of deaths, and the legitimate need for pain reduction and the fact that it is much harder for people in severe pain to be treated now, despite the severe suffering they endure.
I don’t have an answer, but I think the country needs to do a better job of dealing with the reality of both these issues in order to reduce suffering overall.
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Isn’t the problem based on the fact that the physician does not really know how painful the situation is for the patient? The patient can tell the physician, but different patients may use the same descriptor like “very painful” to describe different levels of pain. Then there is the problem of how to determine whether a patient is a drug-seeking abuser versus someone with more legitimate pain medication needs. So errors in judgement by the physician seem unavoidable here.
I think that states part of the problem, though not all of it. There’s a lot of history, policy, assumptions, medical facts and approaches, and general public beliefs to untangle.
I’m not saying it’s simple. I’m just saying that there are two very important public issues, and both need to be attended to with care and awareness of all this.
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Some of these assumptions and beliefs land on hot buttons of race and ethnicity. In same hospitals, Black patients receive fewer opioids than white patients describes a study about racial differences in prescribing opioids. The result of such racial bias generally is that Black patients are less likely to have their pain relieved, but the opioid addiction problem is greater among White people than Black people.
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Called CVS to get a RX refill on Tuesday. The phone thing said my RX would be ready next Monday! Then I got a test telling me that they had tried to contact my doctor for a refill…but couldn’t…and I needed to contact the doc (that has never happened before).
So I spent part of my life on hold listening to bad music today calling the docs office myself. They took care of getting the RX refilled, and it’s now ready for me to pick up.
Really screwed up!
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Exactly.
This is why I love telemedicine. If I need a prescription transferred (sometimes my insurance requires meds to come from the hospital system pharmacy) or renewed, I just send an email and usually a nurse, PA, or some other non-doc person fixes it and sends me a message. Takes me about 4 minutes, mostly used logging into the system. And then they mail it to me if there is time or send it to the pharmacy closer to my house (sadly, only open M-F, so I like mail). If the doc wants me to change meds or take them differently, she messages me and we do it all on MyChart.
Love it.
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We’ve spent the last week getting a C2 filled at cvs, a controlled script, but not a narcotic. Definitely a nightmare for us. This is a daily maintenance med for D.
I make sure dr. Has refill there by day 84. Can be filled on day 88. Cvs doesn’t even order until day 90. Comes in on 94; they fill on 95. Arggg.