Apr 23 2009
Trying to get a prescription refill
I had a very frustrating experience yesterday trying to get a simple refill for a medication that I’ve been taking for the past 15 years. Let’s just say that this prescription is medically necessary, has absolutely no street value, and it is one of those prescriptions where skipping a day could be detrimental to my health. My point? This medication is prescribed by a neurologist and is vital to my overall health.
I called the pharmacy to refill my prescription. Of course, I am out of refills, but as I’ve said, I’ve been taking this for 15 years and I just don’t pay that close attention. I hear, “to have us contact your physician for a refill press 2″, and like a good customer I press 2, finish the computerized conversation and wait for my refill.
I go to the pharmacy 48 hours later to get my refill and I have now run out of my medication that I will need to take in about 6 hours. There is no prescription refill there for me. The technician hunts down my call, the call to the physician’s office and my answer is:
“your neurologist is out of the country. They said you have to contact your primary care doctor.”
This would be fine except my primary care doctor won’t prescribe this medication for me because she wants the neurologist to. She is also not open at all on Wednesdays, the day I was dealing with this, and she will not take prescription refills over the phone.
The pharmacist tried really hard to help me. He asked who my primary doctor was and when I told him he said, “Oh, she won’t even take our calls. Good luck with that.”
Hmmm. So, I need a very important medication refilled, my primary care doctor won’t do it and my neurologist is out of the country without anyone covering his practice. Are they kidding?
The pharmacist was kind enough to provide me three days worth with the hope that I could straighten this out. Fortunately, I called the neurologist’s office anyway and let them know about my weird primary care doctor and her belligerence about refusing to prescribe a very common medication.
Thanks to the receptionist for the neurologist, I have a new prescription. When he called in from out of the country, she got him to refill my prescription.
In the meantime, I was able to schedule an “emergency” appointment with my daughter’s pediatrician who is also a general practicioner and she will be my new doctor.
I understand the need for doctors to protect their licenses and to do what they think is right. The problem is that my primary care doctor is unreachable and refuses to take calls from the pharmacy, even when she is in the office. That is just weird. I’m not asking for a refill of a controlled substance, pain pills or powerful anxiety/sleep meds. I’m asking for a very simple medication that I have safely been taking for 15 years.
Why all the fuss?
Talk about”been there…done that”. I take care of the meds for my elderly mother and occasionally something happens to put us in a similar situation. Thank goodness the Walgreens pharmacy usually gives us the three day supply. I believe Doctors offices should contact their patients that they will be gone for several days or down with their own ills. Perhaps when they finally computerize the health system.
If her reticence to have anything to do with the outside world is detrimental to your health, then to hell with her. She’s supposed to be coordinating with all your specialists to give you the best, most consistent care, and she can’t even step up to give you nary a week’s prescription while you sort stuff out? RUN AWAY.
When I came down with strep throat a week after losing my job and my health insurance, my doctor, sight unseen, called in an antibiotics prescription for me to the pharmacy. She trusted me to know what was wrong (I get strep every 4-6 months, so this was nothing new). She even changed THAT prescription from the $40 Z-pac to the free amoxocillin being offered by the pharmacy. Yes, it took playing phone tag over the course of the afternoon, but it got done before my kidneys exploded, and no one made me feel like crap in the meantime.