To help you understand...

I want to preface this post by telling you all that I truly do enjoy my job. I work for one of the major chain drugstores and like dealing with the public (mostly). However, the question that my friends and family seem to want answered the most is why it takes soooo long for their pharmacists to fill their prescription. (I mean it's just putting pills in a bottle, right? Why on earth should that take more than a few minutes?) So below I have provided a lengthy but accurate answer to this ever important question.

~Jen

Why it takes so long to fill your prescription...

You come to the counter. I am on the phone with a drunk guy who wants the phone number to the grocery store next door. After I instruct him on the virtues of 411, you tell me your doctor was supposed to phone in your prescription. Your Doctor hasn’t, and you’re unwilling to wait until he does. Because I'm in a generous mood I call you doctor's office and I'm put on hold for 5 minutes. When I finally get to talk to someone they inform me that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we’ve ever filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that “for you” means “for your cousin” and you answer my question with a “yes”, whereupon I go to the computer and see you are not on file.

The phone rings.

You have left to do something very important (such as browse through the monster truck magazines) and do not hear the three PA announcements requesting that you return to the pharmacy. You return eventually, expecting to pick up the finished prescription…..

The phone rings.

.…….only to find out that I need to ask your address, phone number, date of birth, if you have any allergies and insurance coverage. You tell me you’re allergic to codeine. Since the prescription is for Vicodin I ask you what codeine did to you when you took it. You say it made your stomach hurt and I roll my eyes and write down “ no known allergies” You tell me……

The phone rings.

.……you have insurance and spend the next 5 minutes looking for your card. You give up and expect me to be able to file your claim anyway. I call my competitor and am immediately put on hold. Upon reaching a human, I ask them what insurance they have on file for you. I get the information and file your claim, which is rejected because you changed jobs 6 months ago. A very not nice man barges his way to the counter to ask where the bread is.

The phone rings.

I inform you that the insurance the other pharmacy has on file for you isn’t working. You produce a card in under 10 seconds that you seemed to be unable to find before. What you were really doing was hoping your old insurance would still work because it had a lower copay. Your new card prominently displays the logo of Nebraska Blue Cross, and although Nebraska Blue cross does in fact handle millions of prescription claims every day, for the group you belong to, the claim should go to a company called Caremark whose logo is nowhere on the card.

The phone rings.

A lady comes to the counter wanting to know why the cherry flavored antacid works better than the lemon cream flavored antacid. What probably happened is that she had a milder case of heartburn when she took the cherry flavored brand, as they both use the exact same ingredient in the same strength. She will not be satisfied though until I confirm her belief that the cherry flavored brand is the superior product. I file your claim with Caremark, who reject it because you had a 30 day supply of Vicodin filled 15 days ago at another pharmacy. You swear to me on your mother’s….

The phone rings.

……..life that you did not have a Vicodin prescription filled recently. I call Caremark and am immediately placed on hold. Upon reaching a human at Caremark, I am informed that the Vicodin prescription was indeed filled at another of my competitors. When I tell you this, you say you got hydrocodone there, not Vicodin. Another little part of me dies.

The phone rings.

It turns out that a few days after your doctor wrote your last prescription, he told you to take it more frequently, meaning that what Caremark thought was a 30-day supply is indeed a 15 day supply with the new instructions. I call your doctor’s office to confirm this and am immediately placed on hold. I call Caremark to get an override and am immediately placed on hold. My laser printer has a paper jam. It’s time for my tech to go to lunch. Caremark issues the override and your claim goes through. Your insurance saves you 85 cents off the regular price of the prescription.

The phone rings.

At the cash register you sign….

The phone rings.

…….the acknowledgement that you received a copy of my HIPAA policy and that I offered the required OBRA counseling for the new prescriptions. You remark that you’re glad that your last pharmacist told you you shouldn’t take over the counter Tylenol along with the Vicodin, and that the acetaminophen you’re taking instead seems to be working pretty well. I break the news to you that Tylenol is simply a brand name for acetaminophen and you don’t believe me. You fumble around for 2 minutes looking for your checkbook and spend another 2 minutes making out a check for four dollars and sixty-seven cents. You ask why the tablets look different than those you got at the other pharmacy. I explain that they are from a different manufacturer. Tomorrow you’ll be back to tell me they don’t work as well.

Now Imagine this wasn’t you at all, but the person who dropped off their prescription three people ahead of you, and you’ll start to have an idea why…..your prescription takes so long to fill.