The Pharmacy Chick

I read a couple of recent posts expressing opinions about vaccinations in pharmacy.  Both bloggers made very valid points about the money that the pharmacy is making at our (the vaccinators) expense when we put in a HUGE amount of extra effort for no extra pay.  They wondered about the wisdom of this.

I am a vaccinator, and jumped on board just 1 year after the legislature allowed pharmacists to do so.  Run by the local division it was a grassroots type of organization and it worked amazingly well.  People really liked the idea of having all adult vaccinations available at their pharmacy given by people they already know and trust.  We branched out and advertised our services to larger companies who might enjoy having us come to THEM by providing flu clinics.  This too was a huge success. 

Perhaps too much so.

Once corporate saw that we were making a lot of money on this, they decided to take it over, and in doing so, ruined it completely for everyone. By changing the appointment system to the on-demand system, they made a mess of monumental porportions. I responded by making appointments priority and walk-ins like any other prescription drop off…subject to what ever wait time is in effect at the moment.  This is the short version of a long story.

Does that mean that we vaccinators flee with abandon and jump ship?  Not so quick.  I will be the first to agree that vaccinations are a lot of work.  They involve more time and effort than a routine prescription. However, that being said,  giving a vaccine is something that cannot be done without the human involvement.  You cannot script-pro or Parata a flu shot.  You cannot mail-order a tetanus shot.  It is also something that possesses a product-service link that cannot be broken.  For every person who has ever whined about paying the administration fee, I have offered the syringe, bottle and offered they draw it up and do it themselves.  So far, I have had NO takers.

Your patients see you in a different light. You interact with them on a one to one basis. You arent just putting pills in bottles.  100+ years of trying to advance this profession and people STILL think that all we do is put pills in bottles.  APHA? you suck. You suck at representing pharmacists and you suck at educating the public.  (but that is a post for the more politically minded)

As technology advances to the point where human involvement is needed less and less, we have to find niches where the human involvement is still required.  And YOU DEAR PHARMACIST need to find your niche.  I can’t be good at EVERYTHING.  I dont have TIME for everything either. Therefore you wont find me doing Cholesterol screenings AND diabetic screens/educating, AND MTM, AND vaccinations, AND etc.  I chose vaccinations and I do it splendidly.  Its MY niche.  If I had more time, I’d love to add Cholesterol to my repetoire.

 I gave over $100,000 worth of vaccines last year.  That covers a lot of prescriptions I lost to mail order.  It covers some of the prescriptions I had to give away for $4. And, no machine could have done it. 

I have gained a pretty loyal following in the process as well.  Over the holiday season I had many of my customers bring in their visiting relatives for flu shots!  “Come on Aunt Esther, lets blow off the mall for now and get a flu shot instead!”. I don’t pretend to understand it but its money in the till, and sales mean less pressure from above.

Like all things, this wagon may leave town. Technology may makes all vaccines ORAL..who knows?  I am sure somebody is working on it.  Til then however I am going to ride it for all its worth. This pharmacist is finding a way to make myself “Indispensable”, by either linking product with a service (like a vaccine) or supplying a service that cannot be duplicated by a machine. Thats my future.

And you? If you think your future is holding that spatula, you are sadly  mistaken.

Tags: pharmacy life | |

Customer staring me down at the pharmacy counter: “What do you recommend for this cold? I have a bad cough and all this (expletive) in my lungs.”  Not being horribly busy at the time I decide to play very-concerned-and-dedicated-to-your-health-pharmacist and go see what he needs.  Since it appears he wants to hack up his lungs AT my feet (clean up , aisle 5!)  I keep a polite distance and secretly wish that a Hazmat suit was part of my uniform…or at least the headwear was.

I ask him the usual questions and ascertain that what he really needs is an expectorant and cough suppressant. And in this blog I prefer to avoid endorsements, so lets just say I recommended Gunk-away DM as the perfect med for his symptoms.  He was at the tail end of this cold and he needed no deongestants, antihistamines, pain relievers, etc.   I told him to drink a lot of fluids, it won’t keep him awake (OR put him to sleep), and lookie, its even on sale!  He had just enough questions to be annoying.  (this isn’t rocket science dude. you are 50 years old, this cannot POSSIBLY be your first cold!). Finally I escaped back into the pharmacy and let him ponder all I told him.

A few minutes later he was at the cash register with a box of Tylenol PM.  “Um, did you want the Gunk-Away?” I asked him.  He just snorfled a bit and said “Nah, this always works”.  (resist the urge to tear hair out…or tear HIS out)

And so dear readers, If you ever wonder why your pharmacist doesn’t seem overly interested in your cold, your hemorrhoids or the rash on your elbow…think of this man and realize this sort of thing happens All..the…time..

Tags: customers, pharmacy life | |

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention.  I think ingenuity is the mother of invention.  There are a lot of inventions out there we certainly dont NEED. 

This little gem has just saved me some of my sanity and I’ll share it with all you retailers out there suffering with e-script-itis. 

Duplicate, errant and wasted escripts are the bane of our computer system.  I can’t delete them, and I certainly dont want them on the patients profile…so what to do with them. 

heh heh…..

Say hello to Trashed, Scripts.    Date of birth 1-1-2001.  Allergic to nothing,  has no insurance. Never picks up his/her rx. Every one is deactivated.

What I did was  make a patient named Trashed, Scripts.  when I get an escript that I dont want, is wrong, has been cancelled by dr, or is a duplicate, I put it under the imaginary patient name Trashed Scripts.  You can call him/her anybody you want.  Once I have uploaded the escript to Trashed Scripts, then I deactivate it, explain why, print the screen and file it with the hard copies.

That way there isn’t scripts in the patient file that should never be there.  Trashed Scripts is my new favorite customer.

Tags: pharmacy life, words of wisdom | |

RING RING

Hello, Dr Dipwad?  Yea, well this is Pharmacy Chick.  Uh, Pharmacy Chick,  the pharmacy next door to your office.  Yes, the one where you could drop a penny from your window and land in my parking lot…

I wanna talk to you about your addiction to E-scripts.  From a pharmacy standpoint, we hate them enough already.  Not only are they intrusive on our computer, interrupting our work with their “notfication-you-cannot-ignore”, but  you send entirely too many of them, many of them are completely unnecessary. We actually liked you better when you faxed in your prescriptions.  We had no idea you would fall completely in love with e-scripts that you would  need professional help in this addiction.  So in the interest of my sanity, I would like you give you some personal instruction and counseling on sending e-scripts.

1. READ your escript before you send it ok?   Don’t send me Protonix 40mg IV injection when you really mean Protonix 40mg tabs. 

2.  Quit sending me duplicates…or )(%&(*&#@! triplicates!  Are you friggin aware that I can’t delete them?  Do you understand that I have to process them and ADD them to your patients profile as a prescription?  Knock it off!    Mr Jones doesnt’ need 4 identical metformin 500 mg prescriptions.

3.  Please reserve escripts for Prescription drugs please!   No pharmacist appreciates getting  scripts for Vitamin C, Calcium supplements, multivites,  Ferrous Sulfate, Colace and Papaya enzymes. If you want your patient to get that stuff give them a list ok? And if you got some really weird thing like Acidophyllis Performis 5 million units, dont even think about e-scripting that.  It took me a call to my help desk to get that one out of my system.

4. KNOW your controlled substances.  Just because YOU are ignorant  that Lyrica is controlled and can’t be e-scripted, doesn’t mean the I am.  I can’t fill it any more than I could fill a C-II you forgot to sign.

5.  Do me a favor, If you wanna CHANGE something on an escript,  CALL ME.  Dont just send me a second one with some minor change and no note explaining why.  It will  save me (and you) a phone call asking you which one is the one you want.

6. AND lastly, Dearest Doctor… DO NOT SEND ME AN E-SCRIPT AND THEN GIVE A HARD COPY TO THE PATIENT.   Its one OR the other. 

And you have a really nice day…Doctor.

Tags: doctors, pharmacy life | |

I got to work today to an unusual calmness around the store.  There weren’t too many in the que and the store was rather quiet , even for 8 am.  I found out later that there was no school today.  I checked the calendar and noted NO specific holiday.   I asked somebody in the know (parent with kids) why there was no school today and he said “Teacher work day”….  wassat??  “teacher work day without kids around to get their stuff done” 

I thought about that for a minute and thought “WOW !! I need one of those!”.. lets pretend for a while:

First day of every month is Pharmacist work day.  No  new prescriptions will be filled (tho I can see keeping the que empty)  No patients will be seen.  No phone calls will be answered.  On this pharmacist work day,  the Chick and her staff will handle all the tasks that have to be squeezed in will be done as they should be.  The schedule will be written.  The shelves will be checked for outdates.  Inventory counts and updates will be made.  The returns will be processed.  The corporate reports will be collected, signed off and filed.   The inspection reports will be filed. The invoices would be reconcilled.  All the rx’s would be in order and shelved. The counters would be dusted and washed off.  These things alone would take up the entire day.  And they would get done!!

What a novel idea..  I have heard of Dr’s offices that have days where no patients are seen, but work gets done.  Why not here? 

Yea…I know, it will never happen… but WHAT A GREAT IDEA!

Tags: pharmacy life, rare days | |

I was reading Angriest today (always a good read by the way) and I had to laugh out loud.  What pharmacist hasn’t had an interaction with some customer who INSISTS they spoke with you that very day about something you have no clue about.  I laughed because I had such an interaction the other day, not about Carter’s Little pills but about a missing prescription.

Miss Priss (about 25 and dressed like a hooker) came to the counter to pick up a prescription, that sadly enough we couldn’t find.  Not only couldn’t we find the rx she wanted but a check into the computer found absolutely no person match with her date of birth (a miracle itself believe me).  She huffed, put her hands on her skinny hips and said ” I transferred my birth control HERE last week AND YOU CALLED ME TO TELL ME ITS READY”.   I also checked her phone number in our data base…no match.

I told her nicely.  ” we have no match on your name, your date of birth NOR your phone number. We did not fill any prescription for her you at this location.” “could you have possibly called another Pharmacy THINKING it was this one?”.

Well of course not…a customer would never make such a mistake.  Since Pharmacy Chick pharmacy is one of a chain and there is only 100 or so in our metro area, there is NO CHANCE she could have called the wrong one.   Pharmacy Chick Pharmacy (PCP) is on a very very, very long street and as it so happens there are 4 PCP’s on the 15 mile stretch of Main street,  none of them have “Main street” in their address. There are, for example, stores on the  corner of 1st and Main,   83rd and Main and 160th and Main etc….  but our addresses are  123 1st street….123 83rd street and 123 160th street.. etc…get it?? Yea I thought so.

She said “well you ARE on Main street arent  you?” and when we told her that we technically were on 83rd street, there was a flash of  “retreat” in her face, but she wasn’t budging.  “I know it was this store!”.

Since I wasn’t going to let her leave thinking we were the failing party here I decided to take a shot in the dark and call the other stores on “main street” I hit the  jackpot on the first one.  Very loudly and succinctly I asked “Sam, this is PC at PCP 83rd street.  Do you have a prescription sitting there for Miss Priss DOB 1-2-85 on your shelf?” Sam said “yea, its been here a week, it was a special order..(sigh) you dont want me to transfer it there do you?” I found out what it was, some specific brand of BC we didn’t have..and it was a Sunday which told me she wanted it NOW…heh heh.  “Oh, I see, Sam, YOU DO HAVE IT THERE?  I SEE,  SHE MUST HAVE CALLED THE WRONG STORE. SINCE I DONT HAVE THAT PRODUCT HERE, I’LL SEND HER TO YOU”. and hung up.  During this whole call, she was on her cell phone complaining to whoever was on the other end about us and our “losing her prescription”.

There was no mistaking the look in her face.  It was THERE.  She was here.  They had the product. I didn’t.  I told her she had 20 minutes before they closed this Sunday afternoon.  “your addresses shouldn’t be so confusing” she complained as she turned on her black high heels and clicked away.

Have a nice day.  Dont miss any of your pills missy, it would be a shame to have two of you on this planet.

Tags: customer interactions, pharmacy life | |

I’ve been pondering this post for a while now. I had given it a name and even worked over some of its content but didn’t decide to write it until I had a chat with my  next door neighbor.  She is a school teacher and as I was walking (or trying to walk) the dog, she drove into her drive way and I asked her “How’s School?”  She launched into a Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of some of the stresses she had been going thru. Her chief complaint (being a special education teacher) was the lack of time she had to complete the grading of her students work.  These students take more effort.  “The one thing I need, I can’t get”  she said..  “TIME”. 

It was an ironic moment because that is precisely what I was shaping this post to be about!.

In the pharmacy I have a lot of tasks to do…phones and questions to answer…prescriptions to fill…and check…patients to counsel…new rx to take off the phone and recorder…reports to write..read..file…orders to make and put away… AND more often than not these things run simultaneously.   I am one person in one body.  I am a champion multitasker, but even I have a limit.  Some things cannot be multitasked.  I cannot and should not put the final check on a prescription while somebody is ragging at me over the counter…sadly and too often, it happens.

Several months ago the company cut out a person from my staff.  Since that time the pressures of the workplace increased dramatically.  You see, we did NOT have a reduction in work  to accompany this reduction in staff.. They just expect me to do the same work with less people.  In other words…Same work…and 40 less labor hours per week  provided.  40 hours of “time” were removed from my workweek.   It has been a painful transition.  What used to take 10 minutes takes twice that long and when we get backed up, prescription wait times have exploded into the 30-45 minute range infuriating people.

Something had to give…and that “something” was all the auxillary garbage the company wants me to do, like keep extra copies of xyz report in the pharmacy, weekly inventory counts,  managing my email inbox, crunching stat numbers, stuff like that.  All of that stuff fell by the wayside.  In fact when I went to my file cabinet recently just to see WHEN I filed my last weekly report…it was August : the week before flu shots arrived.  Hmmmm coincidence? I think not.

But the time I want the most is TIME TO FILL PRESCRIPTIONS.  You know as well as I do that the most important thing I do is NOT filing reports, or handle inventory. Its filling prescriptions.  If I dont dispense prescriptions, I dont make money for this company. So why do they do everything in their power to make it more and more difficult to do that one thing??   Patients don’t help much with their unreasonable expectations.  They have just spent a couple of hours at the dr’s office or “urgent” care clinic and they come to me and think that I am going to produce 3 prescriptions in 10 minutes.  Their wide eyes and gaping mouths laced with incredulity doesn’t speed the process any more.  All I do is waste valuable time TELLING them why it takes so long.   I want to place both hands around their face and say “Look, do you want me to fill them or spend more time talking to you ABOUT it and not actually doing it?” 

And, how many times have you been face to face with a customer who wants a prescription that “They said they called it in a half hour ago!!!”.    Likely its still on the recorder because we are still fleshing out the prescriptions people have handed us.  We are expected to stop everything to listen to (and hope) that the rx this person wants is there. Their dismay is evident when I tell them it will be an additional 30 minutes to add them to the work que.

I just want to drop my head when I am nearing the completion of that prescription and the patient is already back at the window  (in 15 minutes) wanting it.  A few ticks of time..is it too much to ask?

I was at the gas station the other day.  My tank was filling and my thoughts went to the pump.  That pump was going to put gas into my tank at a certain rate.  No whining, stammering, complaining or arguing was going to change that.  I had to wait until it was done. When it was “filled” it was ready.  Likewise, when I go to a restaurant, my food has to cook.  I cannot rush a steak to cook.  I can’t rush cookies to bake. I can’t rush paint to dry.  I can’t rush a surgeon to operate, or a dentist to fill a cavity.   And yet, day after day, we are harassed by people  “can you rush this?”  “he is in the car…I am late…I have to pick my kids up at soccer…I hurt…”

Sometimes when I am nervy enough I ask..”this isn’t fast food” “do you really want us to rush and perhaps overlook something and make a mistake?” “I dont.”

I feel the pressure in my chest and I dont like the way it feels…like a panic feeling.   Its like the walls are closing in when too many things are piled on at once. It never used to be that way, and now its that way quite often.

The gift of time…how wonderful it would be.

Tags: pharmacy life | |

Gotta love the new year.  For every person who wanted everything in their medicine cabinet filled before the end of the year, there is another person who saves everything for January 1 when they have their new insurance. 

A show of hands please for those who endured this:  “Can I have only 22 of drug x and 16 of drug y so I can fill it Jan 1 on my new insurance when I’ll be out of my donut hole?” 

Well Jan 1 came and went with its usual color!  Oh what fun.  A whole new set of PA requests since 2009 formulary is different from 2010.    3 prescriptions for Chantix ( must be those resolutions) all of which were rejected by the insurance  “WHAT?  $147.00?? ” Yea and all those ciggies cost what?   One major plan whose generous 100 day allowance went to 34 only AND a copay hike.  Oh that is going over very well..especially for the Joes and Janes who didn’t bother to read the epistles they sent out to their enrollees.

But the prize goes to all those shmoes who came in with little scraps of paper with numbers and letters with them…”This is my new insurance”..No, sorry THAT is NOT your new insurance.  THAT is heiroglyphics…and a poor job of it too. 

And thank you to all those dudes at corporate who launched another gift card promo.  May you all find solace in lots of boils on your butt.

Happy New Year!

Tags: personal rant, pharmacy life | |

I may take a round about way to get to my point in this post, but trust me, I’ll get there.

I got my very first job when I was 14 and 11/12th years old.  (you had to be 15 to work in my state) My next door neighbor managed a very nice steak house and I got a job bussing tables.  In the town that I lived in, there were only a few really NICE  places to eat, and this was one of them.  From the outside, it looked like a huge 3-pointed A-frame ski chalet.  On the inside it had a dark and private ambience since most of the tables were either booths or enclosed in smoked plexiglass. It really was a nice place for a quiet meal, and apparently the atmosphere worked because it was not uncommon to have 1-2 hour wait lists for dinner on the weekends. That fact alone was phenomenal to me, especially as an adult.  I wouldn’t care if they are serving hundred dollar bills with their meals, I won’t wait 1-2 hours for a meal.  

If you have ever worked in a restaurant, you can testify that the calmness and the soft dark ambience of the front part (the tables),  defies the crazy atmosphere of the kitchen part of ANY restaurant, and this was no different.  Order accuracy and prompt delivery of the hot food was critical.   The two cooks worked feverishly cooking and sorting orders so that not only were individual orders  done correctly , but that the were finished at the same time, since different foods cooked at different rates.   Wait staff were barking requests, the bus help were dashing around keeping the dirty dishes managed, and the dishwashers in the back were constantly transforming dirty dishes into clean ones.  We never seemed to have enough silverware so getting to the clean dishes first was a priority for us.   It was LOUD, it was DISORDERLY sometimes, but honestly it was seldom DISORGANIZED.  It could be called “organized chaos”.    However, the diner never got to see this.   With the kitchen out of view, they only saw their waitstaff disappear with their orders in hand, only to return a short time later with a platter full of nicely cooked steak and seafood.  It wasn’t their concern about HOW the food was prepared, only THAT it was prepared to their liking.  And for that great service they paid a premium ( restaurant prices) and a tip for the wait staff.

The pharmacy isn’t all that different in some regards.  For me personally, I try to portray an image of organization and order in the department.  Even tho we are in plain view and not hidden (tho I think we SHOULD be…another post maybe), Id rather not have the customer see the chaos that can be in the pharmacy.   I try to keep the people milling around to a minimum..(how do you say “go away” nicely??)  so that I can work as quickly and quietly as possible.  Because of this, there is a mistaken idea that we aren’t busy.    There doesn’t have to be 9 people standing around the pharmacy for me to be overwhelmed with work. 

I worked the day before Thanksgiving.  I really hate to work the days before a holiday.  Every “issue” that can come up, ususally does.  Whether it be ” I have to get on a plane in 2 hours and I need this refill oked by my doctor” ( fuggetaboutit), or ” This is Aunt Edna who left her Lantus in Sheboygan, she needs it right away” and has no pharmacy name or number, the day before a holiday is usually fraught with a zillion fires for the pharmacy staff to put out.   About half way thru the day, we had a time where we had probably 1-2 hour of wait time to pick up  prescriptions.  We had close to 40 unfilled (non waiters) and probably 20 waiters that were some where in the store.  They just happened to NOT be at the pharmacy.  This man walked up with yet another waiter, looked around and said “Hmmm…looks like you aren’t very busy today”.   A part of me just snapped.   “Actually sir, we have a 2 hour wait for these prescriptions”.  He looked flabbergasted. “But there is nobody here!” He said.  I told him, “Oh, they are all here..you aren’t looking close enough..they are ALL OVER THE STORE.”.

Maybe I do a disservice to myself by making the pharmacy look calm and collected to the customer.  Maybe they need to see the chaos that is inside.  Maybe I need a number taker out front so they can see how far down the list they actually are.  Just like the restaurant,  they see the nice exterior and fail to see beehive of activity that exists within the prep area so that their (and everybody elses) finished product is done on time and accurately.  Maybe we need an educational video that shows the real life activity in a pharmacy….Maybe I need to pull back the curtain a bit.

They only see THEIR needs, THEIR wants, and THEIR prescriptions.  If you get down to the marrow,  thats all they care about, so don’t kid yourself.  About the only time that people SEE the work load we endure is when the pick-up line is snaking down the aisle, and then we get to hear THEIR complaints about it. 

Would it matter if they knew?  Nah,  I doubt it.   Getting people to cooperate is like nailing Jello to a tree.   And so I just carry on. 

Order UP!

Tags: customers, pharmacy life, ranting and feeling the squeeze | |

Eric, Pharmacist, wrote a nice piece in Drug Topics recently about loyalty cards.  If you haven’t read it yet, click on his link on the blog roll you’ll find it there.  It got me thinking about the darn things and lacking anything really INTERESTING to write about today, I just decided to steal his own topic and simply add to it.  I’ll admit it, I have no shame…

If  I HAD to choose between either samples from the doctors office and the loyalty cards, I suppose I would choose the loyalty cards for the simple reason that I get NO money for samples that come from the doctors office but I do at least generate a sale from the latter.  That being said,  let me make this perfectly clear….Loyalty cards are a colossal pain in the Chick’s rear. 

To clarify…if its not clear enough..I don’t really mind the one-time-here-its-free cards.  Take the card, get your one month free supply of ExpensO-RXatrol and we are done. Finito, Over and out.  I never have to think about that transaction again.   Granted, there are a few brain trusts out there that seem to conveniently  forget  that the  card provided only a one month free supply and wonder rudely the next month “WHY do I have a $75 copay for Luxiq? I didn’t pay that LAST month??”  only to stomp off and refuse to take the prescription. 

No, the loyalty cards that tie the Chick’s feathers in a knot are the re-usable..monthly cards for 3 dispensings, 6 dispensings,  1 yr, 18 month…you get my drift.  Give me a break.  You get Pimple Face Finnegan in here with  Cards for Solodyn, EpiDuo, yada yada yada and his mother expects me to remember that each month this card goes with this drug and on and on…  SORRY MOM, THAT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN…

I fill over 6000 prescriptions each month.  99% of them are billed to some kind of insurance or discount plan.   I am damn excellent at keeping track of 1 insurance, and most of the time, if I have it bookmarked, i can sometimes remember the split bill…but not always.  Therefore, when I so these split bills, I tell the patient (in the most kind manner possible) “Dearest customer,  I take your loyalty cards, but it is YOUR responsibility to make sure they are done..not mine..so when you ORDER THE PRESCRIPTION, not pick it up, please remind the staff that you have this card because it will be  returned to the back of the line if it needs to be rebilled at the time of pick-up. ”  

Unfortunately my computer does not have any kind of “flag” that tells me that any given rx was split billed.  It just doesn’t. And while I do my best to put “split bill” in the comment line, that comment line applies to every thing we look at on their file, not just that rx.   Nothing stops the line from moving quicker than when my tech moves from the cash register TO a computer with a RX and a loyalty card…and does NOT move the customer out of the way.  I have endured too many glares from customers when I tell them to step away from the counter when we rebill cards for them…Know what??? Tough noogies. If you want to have $25 knocked off your Diovan..wait your turn.

Now we have special loyalty cards that frustrate the cashier also. Not only do they require a split bill, but they “fund” a card that has to be swiped at the cash register, in order for the customer to receive the loyalty discount.  (Insert head slap here!).  These transactions have to be very specially done, in order to work. In a nutshell, if the copay is $40 for Aciphex, and the card takes $30 off, then the clerk has to ring up  $40, collect $10 FIRST, to make the remainder $30 show on the register…then the customer has to slide the loyalty card, put in the PIN number, and process to get the #30 off. It will not work in any other order. 

My question WHAT THE HECK for??.  Why add this step when the split bill process would have been sufficient?  Im just sayin….

Recently this woman brought me 4 prescriptions for acne medications from a physician whose sole purpose in life (I believe) is to promote the most expensive dermatologicals on the planet. I believe I have written about him before.  Each of these rx’s had a loyalty card associated with it, but some were actually duplications in treatment.  “Mom” gave me this deck of cards and rx’s and wanted me to provide “whichever was the cheaper product”.  Steaming with rage because we were slammed (being a Monday).  I wasted close to 30 minutes billing, and rebilling this nightmare, for which she thanked  me by taking NONE of them.   “I just wanted to know how much they cost”. 

Maam?  may the fleas of a thousand camels find solace in your underwear tonight.

Tags: customers, doctors, insurance, pharmacy life, rambling | |