Lost Rx

Frantic Pharmacist posts, over on his blog Counsel Me:

I don’t feel like a lot of people have the respect for prescription medication
that it warrants. And sorry, but I see NO reason why any prescription should be
‘lost.’

I agree.  There is no reason to lose a prescription.  That’s why I felt like an idiot when I did it.

My most recent medicine came, conveniently, in two bottles.  Thinking that the two separate bottles were perfect, I put one in the kitchen cabinet with all my other prescriptions, and took the other out to the car.  If it was in the car, then I’d have the option of being away from home at mealtime.

It worked great.  At least it did until the day I took the last pill out of the bottle in the kitchen and went to the garage to get some of the medicine out of the other bottle.  The bottle was gone.

I looked everywhere.  It wasn’t in the cup holder where I’d been keeping it.  It wasn’t in the center console.  It wasn’t in the glove box.  It wasn’t under the seat.  I was getting frantic.  I can’t eat without those pills!

I searched the car again.  I looked under the other seats and in the back.  That bottle was nowhere to be found.  Thinking back, I remembered where I’d last taken those pills.  I was wearing my green coat, and I also had my laptop computer.  I checked all my coat pockets.  Nothing.  I emptied my computer bag.  Still nothing.

I lost my prescription.  How can someone lose an entire bottle of pills?  What kind of idiot does that?!

I didn’t have any refills, and even if I did, it was too soon for insurance to pay.  Having no pills, I didn’t eat that day.  I spent my time looking everywhere (again) that I thought those pills might be – and a lot of places I didn’t think they could be.

It’s bad enough to have lost my pills, but I couldn’t get out of this mess without help.  Finally I phoned my doctor’s office and they phoned in a refill for me.  I was dreading my trip to the pharmacy, because those pills cost over $100 and it would be out of my own pocket.

At the pharmacy I sheepishly explained to my pharmacist that I’m an idiot.  She looked at me incredulously and exclaimed, “That’s a huge  bottle!  How could you lose it?!”

She was right.  It’s not one of those tiny prescription bottles.  This stuff stays in the manufacturer’s bottle and just gets an Rx label slapped on it.  I had no idea how I could have lost it.

I explained what had happened, and told her I realized that insurance wouldn’t pay since it was my screw-up, but I really needed those pills.  Before ringing up the sale, she worked her magic and got my insurance to cover the pills.  To me, that’s going above and beyond the call of duty.

She rang up my prescription and I signed the little electronic pad.  I then opened my purse to pay.  There, beside my wallet, was my missing prescription bottle.  It was in my purse!  I am such an idiot.

I still think there’s no excuse for losing a prescription.  It happens, though.  People aren’t perfect – not even close.

Technology in the Pharmacy

I love when technology makes life easier.  New processes and inventions come along that are so much better that nobody would dream of returning to the old way of doing things.

Bulldozers and other earth moving equipment took the place of wheelbarrows & shovels for building roads.  Executive secretaries now run word processing software on a computer instead of generating letters using typewriters and carbon paper.  Doctors offices use a scheduling database instead of the old giant scheduling books.  Western Union doesn’t have much call for telegrams now that phones are so common.  New, efficient technology replaces the old, and people are happy to make the switch because it makes their lives so much easier.

That said, I don’t think we’re there yet with e-scripts.  The general concept with electronic prescriptions is that when a doctor writes a script, that information is simultaneously sent to the pharmacy and entered in a patient’s medical record.

If pharmacists and doctors were all ecstatic over how e-scripts solve a bunch of problems and make their lives easier, maybe I’d re-think my position.  They’re not, though, so I’d rather hand-carry my prescription to the pharmacy.

1. I know it gets to the right place if I deliver the prescription myself.
2. I know what the prescription says if I have it in my hand.
3. I can keep a copy for my records and can refer back to it if the instructions on the bottle of pills that I’m given doesn’t match up to what the doctor told me to take.
4. I can tell the pharmacist when I still have half an old bottle left, so he doesn’t need to fill this new prescription from a different doctor until the old bottle is gone.
5. The pharmacist doesn’t need to do the work of filling meds I can get OTC if the prescription is for something that’s available both ways.

Doctors can still enter prescriptions into their computerized records.  It’s simple to print the prescription instead of sending it to the pharmacy wirelessly:  same result from the doctor’s point of view, better results from mine.

Pharmacy Staplers

Pharmacy Chick has a post up about tools of the trade – mostly special pharmacy spatulas (some of which look a whole lot like cake decorating spatulas) and counting trays.  In the comments section, two different pharmacists commented on how much they love their staplers.

Love staplers?  Me – I hate it when the pharmacy uses a chunk of bent metal to attach my med info to the bag.

• I can’t read the med info when it’s stapled shut.  Since pharmacists have been known to complain on their blogs that people don’t read those med inserts, maybe they should quit stapling the things closed, making it impossible to read them!
• That receipt that’s stapled to the bag is part of my tax records.  I have to detach said receipt without ripping, shredding, or otherwise mutilating it because my accountant is funny about those receipts being legible.
• When the tech has to do anything other than hand me the bag, she rips that tax deduction receipt – and then re-attaches the pieces with another staple and acts like it’s completely unimportant that I will be obligated to attempt a repair job.  Argh!

I’m sure it’s faster to staple something to the bag instead of handwrite a name, but it would be nice if that staple was through the empty end of the paper instead of smack in the middle of my receipt.  I hate knowing that a wrestling match with a staple-remover will follow every trip to the pharmacy.

Even better would be if the pharmacy printer were to spit out one label for the bag (one per patient) at the same time it prints everything else related to a prescription (bottle label, receipt, drug info…).  Surely it would be simple to slap that label on a bag of meds – even easier than locating a stapler and keeping it filled.

I do not love my pharmacy’s stapler!