This lovely story was sent in by a huge fan of FFP:
I work at a big corpo chain pharmacy in Fl. Tonight we were dead slow and just waiting for the ER across town to empty their waiting room into ours. My favorite out of the entire evening was a 45ish gentleman. Gentleman is much too nice a word actually. More along the lines of white trash addict. Now, we're talking no shoes-black holey tshirt-cut off jean shorts-unwashed hair. But even better, he has the front half of the left side of his head completely shaved. A large noticable scar that has been stapled shut. He hands me his Rx. There's just one for lortab. (SHOCKER!!) I ask him if there is more than one. He says no. Now, our hospitals in town are hardcore strict about only filling controls with a antibiotic and staple them all together. Now...immediately I'm suspicious about it and look harder at the Rx. There's a staple still attached to the hardcopy and two little pink corners of paper under the staple...hence, two more prescriptions. I ask him to go get them and he says "How'd you know that?"
I'm a genius...
So he goes out to the car and brings them in. One of the other techs types them in and we get to filling them. He is adamant about only getting the lortab because he "lost his wallet" and cant afford them. He's on Medicaid. I'm practically paying for his Rx's. He's getting all three of them whether he likes it or not.
Doxycycline, Augmentin XR, generic Augmentin 875, and the Lortab....those are the 4 Rx's. So of course we call to verify the fact that he's taking an exceedingly large amount of Augmentin. He's freaking out the whole time at the counter about how long it's taking and says he's in a hurry. The pharmacist says "Well im not going to be held liable so he's going to wait." Apparently he has a very very bad infection and must take them or he will be admitted to the hospital...or so the doctor says.
Crackhead says "Im not going to take the antibiotics anyways so i might as well just get them how they are".
He goes the the cooler down the aisle, gets a Mountain Dew, and begins to drink it. Finally the Rx's are done and everything's been taken care of. We ring him up. Tell him it's $1.50 for the Mountain Dew and the Rx's are free.
"Oh, my wallet was stolen. I dont have the money for it," says the Crazy Crackhead.
It wasnt even worth bothering with. It's not coming out of my paycheck.
I was clocking out to go home while he was being rung up. I follow him out the door...he opened the Rx bag. Takes out the lortab bottle...throws everything else in the trash can outside the front door.
I love our tax money paying for other people's stupidity.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I hope you realize that as a liscensed pharmacist, you have a "responsability" to the patient to deny him any prescriptions that you deem "not in his best interest"...or at least telling the prescriber that he's being a dick and says he won't take the augmentin. This is why I work in the office of Drug Control...our customers are always wrong. ^_^
I wish my job had the same "customer is always wrong" policy on everything but if I wish in one hand and crap in the other, I am afraid the other will fill up first..... Thanks "Corporate America" for promoting customer satisfaction and freebies! On a lighter note: I am lucky enough to have a pharmacy manager and store management that totally back me up, even to the point of calling the police when I deny an rx.
First time Mom comes to counter it's 5:45 and we close at 6:00. Mom says she'd on Medicaid and doesn't have money for the brand name cough syrup the ER MD wrote for 5 year-old. I called ER and got an alternative. I only have two bottles of the antibiotic and the Rx is for 3, so we'll have Mom come back on Monday. Okay. The antibiotic Rx was $4.00. Mom comes back and says doesn't have any money and 'Dad' can come in and pay tomorrow. OK. I fix a small partial for the cough syrup and one of the bottles of antibiotic. Mom says 'I've never paid for antibiotics before on Medicaid. Why does it cost $4.00? At Wal-mart we don't charge patient for partials until whole thing is filled. So, Mom is getting ready to refuse it. I say, surely someone at home has $4.00 to pay for this little boy's antibiotic, at least by Monday (if they come back on Monday!) Some people are too entrenched, I think. Maybe, they dropped out of grade school to have children. Anyway, there's a lot of issues in healthcare--big pharma, medical insurance acquisition and the sense of 'entitlements', with pharmacists in the middle--I think that's what wears down the pharmacist, juggling it all with unevenly weighted hammers.
You can't be serious - if he threw those antibiotics in the garbage in front of me, i'd have wanted to chase him down and take the lortab back! That is DISGUSTING and wrong. Over 60% of the patients at the pharmacy I work at are on Medicaid... I wonder how many of them do that.
If we didn't keep supporting these idiots, wouldn't they breed themselves out eventually? OK I admit I have a problem with empathy and I didn't become an RPh "to help people"
there are too many freaking people on medicaid. I am beginning to just hate them all. I had a woman say "oh I don't really need these Rx's (she had 5 of them..) but since Medicaid will pay for them, I might as well get them, know what I mean?" and I WANTED to say, no I don't know what you mean, I work for a living.
Post a Comment