The Pharmacy Chick

Pharmacy Chick is one unhappy pharmacist this evening. The relief pharmacist scheduled for tomorrow cancelled and I have to work. That means 52 hours this week. I dont work because I like to. I dont work because I want to. I work to make a living and I only maintain my sanity by sticking to 40 hours. I REALLY dont like to add another 11+ hour shift. We all know this isn’t a cake job, and the last thing I want is 11+ more hours of high stress in my week. I know they tried to find coverage. It didn’t happen, so they expect me to be there. Sucks to be me today.

So what would happen if I really wasn’t available? Close the store? Its not the first time, I doubt it will be the last time. I’m sick of this shortage nonsense. I can’t be sick, and its a pain to get a vacation.

Don’t tell me to be grateful I have a job. I AM grateful to have a job. I purposely picked this field because it was a good long time job prospect. Little did I know that 22 years later we’d STILL have a critical shortage of pharmacists. Little did I know I’d have to ask for vacations a year in advance and still only hope I get it. Little did I know that you could completely suck as a pharmacist but if your liscence is intact and you are willing to work, you are hired.

My family doesn’t understand that I cannot “just come” to a wedding when I get the invite 30 days ahead of time; and that if you want the Chick’s to come to your event/reunion/whatever, you better let us know at least 6 months ahead of time, especially if its in the summer….and then hope.

The job pays well, but this aspect really stinks. The tech said “at least you get extra money”….You know what? I’d take my planned day at the lake over the cash anyday. They tax the crap out it anyway.

I’m having my own pity party tonight–attendance: one.

Tags: personal life, pharmacy life, ranting, vacation | |

I know I have written about this before, but it happened again today. Pharmacy Chick Pharmacy was closed. The lights were out and the gates were down. Somebody walked up and wanted to pick up their prescription after hours. I cannot explain it, but Pharmacy Chick becomes (internally) Pharmacy Biachi when this happens. It is not one of my endearing qualities and a characteristic I am not particularly proud of. I may have Jesus Christ living in my heart, but I must have Him hog-tied and blind-folded when people bother me after hours. I don’t go postal, but I am sure there is no mistaking that I am not thrilled. I guess every human has a button that shouldn’t get pushed. That’s mine.

One of the rx’s had been on the shelf for 4 days. Strike ONE. They tried to hand me a loyalty card–nope, sorry, everything is closed. Strike TWO. The loyalty card was expired anyway. Ball ONE. She was leaving on a plane for Africa tomorrow: Home run, so take your Rx go in peace.

The other guy’s had been on the shelf for two days. I told him this would cost him–he asked if his insurance would pay the fine. I told him no, but I could be bribed with chocolates, plane tickets to cancun, etc.

The third one wanted to rent crutches : “we ‘just’called (45 minutes ago) about renting crutches”. Perhaps we need to define “just”.

I cannot explain it, but when I close, I skate like a prisoner set free. I don’t even like to shop after work. I like to get into my car and go home. I give my company 100% when I work, and since they dont afford me the “luxury” of a lunch or break, I guess I don’t feel they are entitled to unpaid labor. I am surprised that I can be inconvenienced all day and not bat an eyelash, maybe I am too fiercely protective of my private time, or I am a damned good actress while I work. I think Hollywood should award an Oscar for “Best impersonation of a happy person while at work”. Every pharmacist in America should win one.

Its a tough call for me, I’d like not to have that feeling, but its been pretty consistent for 20+ years. Don’t approach a growling dog and Dont rattle the cage of Pharmacy Chick after closing. You might lose your fingers.

Time to untie Jesus.

Tags: customers, pharmacy life, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick hates working the day after a holiday. Let me repeat that: Pharmacy Chick HATES working the day after a holiday. She also isn’t so fond of working the day before a holiday either. Today’s excerpts:

1. Three people that decided that today was the day wanted to get an immunization. No, we couldn’t do it any other time, we had to choose today. What else do these retirees have to do on a tuesday? Bunco? Soap Opera? Checkers?

2. Some guy (who is still wearing the ER bracelet from 2 days ago) who hands me a script from Michigan….written in sanskrit (or looks like it) with no Dea number…with one of those generic scripts with someting like 6 clinics to choose from and he didnt’ bother to check which one he worked out of….for Vicodin and Ibu. Couldn’t have filled it in Michigan eh buddy?

3. Some girl who lost her Accutane Rx (good luck with that one). A few hours later its called in, from a different state. Thankfully Dr had the I Pledge number…but… No surprise that I Pledge Program said NO WAY. She had no insurance card (another long distance phone call for me). Finally SHE did her online stuff, then I did mine, and off she went.

4. Some gal with a script for a nebulizer…I dont dispense nebs…”whups, I needed Albuterol, can you call my dr?” (I make her do it). After much hand wringing, its determined that she already HAS albuterol and its PULMICORT that she wants..even tho she told the tech 3 times that she HAD pulmicort at home. She didn’t have her insurance card either. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when she called the Dr office back to get her insurance number also…

5. Some guy says he is sick and wants me to call his family to pick him up. I ask him if he wants an ambulance. He says no and I call his wife/girlfriend/whatever. They spend 45 minutes sitting in my tiny wait room. More than once I go out to see if they want medical assistance, water, a bucket?(PC does NOT want puke anywhere around the pharmacy. They always decline. Then they both vanish.

6. No trips to the potty and no lunch all day…all 12 hours of it. You know, if you go hungry long enough, you quit feeling the hunger. Pharmacy Chick starts getting grouchy when she doesn’t get to eat so there were a few techs treading lightly this afternoon.

7. Piss off to every one of you who handed me a transfer to price match for $4 and then had the nerve to hand me a gift card coupon. May your butt break out in boils all over.

8. The woman who drops off 6 rx’s for herself and her kids, PC and staff scramble to get them ready and she then says “I only wanted one today, I’ll get the rest tomorrow” (Boils for her too)

9. Pharmacy Chick hates seeing a tech return to the computer with a filled script when its being rung up. How can I tactfully say “so, what the hell is wrong with THIS one?” when this lady’s insurance charged her $59 and some change for her Yaz. She wanted to try her other insurance. That one broke the $60 mark so back to insurance 1. She held up the line, she tried my patience and wasted my time. Boils on her backside too.

10. And lots of Boils to the guy who hands me several rxs to do, and after I fill them all, bring them to the cash register, counsel and walk off only to have him say “these are workers comp”.

11. Some lady who comes in asking for 2 prescriptions. Tech asks for the name and she gives her own. We look her up and she hasn’t had a script for 2 years at our store. She makes some comment about the MD calling the wrong store “again” and leaves. About a half hour later, this lady’s husband calls and complains that we told his wife that we didn’t have a prescription for HIM. She didn’t ask for one for HIM, she gave HER name and told us it was TWO. We had ONE….for HIM. She pissed and moaned about coming back. Its all our fault.

But lastly, the only thing keeping me from drinking tonight instead of blogging: the wonderful thanks I got from a patient for whom I prevented a drug interaction when her Dr prescribed Levaquin and Zithromax last week,and the cute older couple who think I walk on water and thanked me (again) for always taking care of them….Y’all keep coming back ok?

I still dont like working the day after holidays, but I survived another one.

Tags: customers, pharmacy life, rambling, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick recently had some work done on her home. They figured it might take around 4 days but I looks like it will take a little while longer, maybe 5-6. I didn’t complain. This is my home, my abode, my domicile, my sanctuary. My home is important to me, I want the work done correctly, and its not costing me any more money if this project takes 4 days or 6. If I rush them, they may make a mistake or cut corners. It was hot outside so I left some sodas in a cooler for the workmen as I bid adeiu for the day. Every day I would come home to see what they had done. I compare it to opening Christmas presents every day: “oh, look at this! Cool!”

How might things work in the pharmacy if people adopted the same attitude: I am having a prescription filled at my pharmacy. The clerk told me it may take 15 minutes, but I looks like it may take 20-25. I am not complaining. This is my body, and its important to me. I want my prescription filled correctly and its not costing me any more money if it takes 10 or 30 minutes to fill. If I rush them, they may make a mistake and give me the wrong medication…..

Too bad it doesn’t work that way. “HOW long??” “All you have to do is put pills in a bottle!” “I have to go to a meeting/basketball game/pick my kid up from soccer/get to the airport..” “Can you rush it?”

It happened the other day. A lady was pissed because the Dr had left a message (new script) on our machine about 1/2 hour before she arrived. I hadn’t pulled it yet because we were slammed. I told her we were busy and I would get to it as quickly as I can. She pulled attitude on me.” You’re busy? My husband’s in pain”. I rushed the rx and didn’t check it as good as I should have. I put the wrong doctor’s name on the rx (same last name, wrong first name). She made a point of telling me a few days later while I was out on the sales floor. With a bit of haughty in her voice ” I called your other pharmacist to make sure I got the right medicine too”

I just calmly replied as I walked back into the pharmacy “serves me right for rushing it for you. huh?”

Tags: customers, mistakes, pharmacy life, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick is not a cheapskate, she doesn’t like to waste money but she isn’t one to wear the face off a penny in my pocket either. She likes to buy stuff on sale (when she actually shops–PC doesn’t like shopping much either). However, in Sunday’s paper there was a huge several page ad for a department store for their Mothers Day sale. “BIG SALE” they said, and attached, wrapped in pink was a coupon for an “extra 15% off sale, new reduction, and clearance apparel, handbags and accessories for her, him and kids including fine jewelry, bridge and fashion jewelry*”

The dreaded Asterisk “*”. I pulled out my electron microscope to read the small print because there was a lot of it. Apparently there were some serious restrictions on this so-called “extra 15% off”. For your reading pleasure I will tell you exactly what I cannot buy in this store and my comments:

Excludes: Regular priced items (well, thanks, I wasn’t going to buy anything that wasn’t on sale anyway but that now excludes most things in your store), Cosmetics and Fragrances (so I cannot look or smell good on sale) Lacoste, The North Face, Burton Snowboarding(thank GOD I dont snow board), INC International Concepts, American Rag (I am not wearing anything called “rag” thank you) Impulse, Bridge Sportswear, swimwear, Kate Spade, Mephisto, Designer handbags(so they only meant CRAPPY handbags and accessories) and shoes for her, Coach, Dooney and Bourke (I thought they had already excluded the designer handbags, but we are going to mention them again), Levi’s, Dockers(which is probably 70% of the product line), Selected men’s designers (in case they forgot to mention any by NAME here) Tasso Elba and Material London sportswear, Vera Wang, Baccarat, Lalique, Lladro, Waterford (oh yea, I have that all over my house), designer bed, bath and table linens (but I guess the cruddy bed bath and table linens are ok), All-Clad, Henckels, Wusthof, ALL electrics and electronics, furniture, mattresses and area rugs. Not valid on Everyday Values(just on the stuff we mark way up), fine jewelry Super buys( So, its only on fine jewelry you have marked up to absorb the coupon loss huh?), Gift cards, specials, maternity, gift registry, previous purchases, or gift wrap. blah blah blah….

So the question that begs answering is: What is left? One small rack in the corner labeled “priced as marked” with a conglomerate of womens out of season clothing in either XS or XXL, stuff with a button missing or a torn hem? The coupon also states that you can get an extra 10% off shoes for her but then they specifically exclude shoes for her, so I guess that leaves me confused.

It basically leaves out probably 80 percent of the store. The entire 2nd floor is furniture, housewares, electronics and electrics, and everything you would buy for a gift registry (dinnerware, etc). So there is no point in even going upstairs cuz you can’t use the coupon there. Downstairs there is Cosmetics and fragrances, and shoes (whups, forget that…its excluded), all the handbags and jewelry (nope, fuggetaboutit). There is also the womens clothing but the stuff I like is either not on sale (exludes regular price items) or their private label Everyday Value (yup…exluded).

So whats the freakin point? To all you people who make these coupons, either suck it up and just give the people the sale price you allegedly advertise pre-micro-print or just forget about the damn coupon since there isn’t much you haven’t already exluded. Frankly don’t you think you might have used less ink if you put what WAS included instead of what was EXLUDED?

I stayed home instead.

Tags: personal life, rambling, ranting | |

Call them whatever: club cards, preferred shopper cards, loyalty cards. They are the newest bane to our shopping experience. To get the sale price on goods nowdays, you have to be a “member” of the company’s “club”. I’d rather not, but I also want the sale price. It seems just a tad unfair that there are now 2 classes of shoppers: club members and the great unwashed. For the most part, I am a part of the latter when it comes to these cards. I have been coerced into getting the ones for the places I shop the most, but I don’t like them. Now I have reason to dislike them even more.

My neighbor works for a grocery store…let me rephrase that. My neighbor WORKED for a grocery store. She now works for somebody else. This happened a while ago and I only recently learned about it. I don’t make a habit of tracking the employment history of my acquaintances. As many others have, my neighbor’s (I’ll call her Stella) company initiated their own savings card. For a while it was a fiasco because in my town, respecting one’s privacy is a big deal. Every one pretty much minds their own business and most don’t appreciate intrusions. Therefore it was a hard sell to get people to put their name, address, phone, etc on an “application” for a card that now was required to get the sale prices that they got for “free” before.

It took a while but most people eventually signed up. Occasionally however a shopper would wander thru buying stuff who didn’t have this savings card. The checker was supposed to enroll the shopper at that time, and hand them their new shiny card. Stella was working one day and such an occasion arose. The shopper was traveling thru the area. He didn’t need a card. He didn’t want a card. He just had a few items which happened to be on sale. It was also very busy and she wanted to move the line thru. Stella grabbed a savings card from a nearby pile and scanned it to provide the sale price for the customer. He paid for his purchase and she put the card back in the pile. Unfortunately for Stella the customer behind her was a corporate employee with an axe to grind.

Get this: it was a violation of company policy to give a customer the sale price using a “generic” or “unassigned” savings card. He called her on the carpet for this and she lost her job that very day. I couldn’t believe what Stella was telling me. I shop at both this company and a competitor because one is close to work and the other is close to home. When I forget my card at the competitor, they have ONE HANGING FROM A CHAIN FOR THE CHECKER TO USE. But if I shop at Stella’s former store, the checker will get fired for doing that same thing.

I asked Stella if she knew she could get fired for that. She said “They told us we weren’t supposed to use generic cards for purchases. I didn’t know I could get fired for it”

In my company, there are lots of things we are “supposed to and NOT supposed to” do. We are supposed to wear black pants and shoes. Sometimes I wear a flowered skirt and sandals. We are not supposed to have any overtime, but sometimes we have to. I am supposed to file certain reports in a certain drawer, but I dont have room in that drawer so I keep them someplace else. I don’t think I will get canned for doing or not doing any of these things so this whole thing confuses me. I fail to see how one company can have a savings card hanging from a chain so nobody goes without their sales price, and another fires a checker for giving one traveler a break by giving him the sale price without an official savings card.

Personally I find it amazing that a company holds this infraction on the same level as, say… stuffing hundred dollar bills from the till down your pants, or coming to work drunk, or assaulting a customer. Yessiree, give somebody an undeserved sale price and hand over your apron and name tag please.

Stella still hurts by this dismissal. Its been over 3 years and she doesn’t like to discuss it. To her, its an embarassment to be fired. She found a new job and loves it. No longer does she pull groceries over a scanner. Her feet don’t hurt at the end of the day and she doesn’t live and die by the fickle whim of a corporate giant.

We should all be so lucky. Everytime I have to use my savings card, I think of Stella, and wonder how many Stellas they thew away.

Tags: personal life, ranting | |

There are not many things invented in this world that can bring such ranges of emotion, from adoration to rage, as the cell phone. Personally, I find it a minor convenience, and a major headache at my job. I have a cell phone, and like my Palm pilot, it is usually OFF and at the bottom of my purse someplace. I use it only slightly more than my Palm, and even then, only when we travel. I have a minimal plan with shared minutes with Mr Chick and we have never come close to using them all up. I don’t know how to text, read mail or contact the International Space Center from my phone. AND, if I hadn’t dumped it in the toilet one day, I’d probably still have my original phone from 6 years ago.

What I am saying here is this: I have it for my convenience, not everybody elses. I simply believe that I am not obligated to be reachable by phone 24-7. Apparently not everybody shares this view and herein lies the problem! I ask you–what is it about this 4 ounce piece of electronic hardware that makes otherwise decent individuals into a complete idiots when it comes to common courtesy?

I was taking information from a patient at the drop off window. She asked me a question about some health issue and I was in the middle of answering it when her phone rang. She raised her finger to me (!?! What the he**?) and proceeded to answer the phone. What ticked me off was not the mere answering the call, it was the fact that she TOOK the call to its completion that irritated me so. I am not the servant to be shooed away at the whim of the mistress. I walked away. I looked at my tech with the best “Can you believe this?” look I could muster up and she just shrugged her shoulders.

If it was an isolated incident I could let it go, but it seems more and more commonplace to have a patients with cell phones glued to their ear when they come to pick up a prescription. We even have a sign at the counter telling people to hang up before they approach. Do they hang up? Some do, but others regard it as a sign that applies to everybody but them.

One Type A guy in an expensive business suit was yakking it up when he approached the counter to pick up a new rx. It required counseling and I told him (very nicely) that I would talk to him when he was off his phone. He snapped his phone shut and I went over the directions for his prescription etc. As I was finishing it up he piped up and asked, “So, it is YOUR personal policy to have me hang up my phone? I pointed to the sign and said “No, actually its the COMPANY’S policy. For your safety I must have your complete attention when I tell you about this medication you are about to put into your body and its potential violation HIPAA to have your caller listening in on this conversation.” He grabbed his sack and flipped open his phone as he walked away.

And when ya think it can’t get any worse, somebody invents the Bluetooth head set, so you can appear to the world that you are talking to yourself! This may be a marvelous invention for the person who must talk on his phone while driving, walking, shopping, and peeing, but I am oh-so-close to ripping one right off of somebody’s head the next time he/she is taking a call while at my counter. At least with a cell phone, a person looks like they are on the phone. Now I have people who look like they stepped out of Star Trek. Is he or isn’t he on the phone? Beam me up Scotty, all the intelligent life on this planet is gone.

A friend of mine is a receptionist at a Dr’s office. He practices alone so he writes the rules at his office. I’d like to run his pharmacy should he ever have one. Their policy is written on the wall. Turn off the phone before you enter the office. If your phone rings while you are seeing the Dr, your appointment is immediately over and you (not your insurance)will be charged for a full office visit. Way to go, Doc!

Because I don’t sign my own paychecks, I can’t lay down the law like I’d prefer. Too many people have learned to play the R card….. Rude. All somebody has to do is say the R word and management comes unglued and starts throwing gift cards and apologies around like it was confetti. Truth doesn’t matter, and the customer knows it. All he has to do is say that I was rude and it becomes fact.

If Pharmacy Chick was queen of the world, I’d pitch the nicely written sign at my window and replace it with my own sign. ” Don’t even THINK of using a cell phone here- We will confiscate and put it in a bucket of water”

heh heh heh..

Tags: cell phones, customers, ranting | |

Let me begin this post by telling you all that Pharmacy Chick never wanted to own a home computer. She was dragged into the information age, kicking and screaming. I have an answering machine only because I got it free as a door prize. I own a palm but it is usually dead in my purse. If it weren’t for cable channels over 13, I’d still own my old TV with knobs–remember knobs? I am simply not a technophile–if anything, I am a techno-PHOBE. (the fact that I blog is amazing when you consider this factoid)

It was only because EVERYTHING was going “WWW” that I finally relented and purchased a computer. It was the biggest piece of junk and the hugest source of frustration that I could ever have inflicted upon myself, aside from being a pharmacist! To keep this post under 50,000 words, I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that I was doomed from the start–it wouldn’t power up. Before I ever saw a Windows splash screen, I had the tower box apart: the power button was never hooked up. It went downhill from there. Thankfully I had purchased the extended warranty because I used it extensively. By the time they finally replaced the unit, I had probably used up 10 computers worth of parts and labor.

Fast forward now 10 years:

My first computer has been long since dumped. I moved on to a different brand name. For the most part it has run flawlessly….until a few days ago. My notebook started to freeze up. DOA, with whatever I was doing on the screen just frozen in time. Then, it wouldn’t reboot unless I whapped the keyboard. The Caps-Lock LED would blink 10 times and die. It appeared that motion was causing the unit to freeze. I did what every good computer owner would do: I called Tech Support.

What evil demon possessed me to do that? First off I got somebody in some far off country. I won’t say which country so I am not labeled as a hate monger, but suffice to say it wasn’t a local-boy. His English was spotty at best. I think these people do tech support because they hate you and I. Not only did I have to repeat everything twice, HE insisted on repeating everything back to me– ME: my computer freezes. HIM: so, you are saying your computer freezes? you get the gist of it–over and over. Computer sadism: inflict as much pain as possible without actually doing anything to actually fix the problem.

He held me hostage for over 90 minutes. After having me run the gauntlet of worthless diagnostics, I finally gave up. It was almost midnight (what did he care? it was lunch time there!). The next day I gingerly rebooted my computer and placed it on a hard surface. If it moved, it froze. I decided that internet computer forums might give me more information than this dude did. You’d of thought this had never happened before this brand of notebook! When he learned my notebook was 4 years old, he implied it was time to replace it. I paid almost $1600 for this thing: 4 years does not make it a dinosaur!

An aside: I learned from my techno-geek friends who helped me during my last computer nightmare that Tech Support’s cop-out fix to get you off the phone is to advise you to “reformat your hard drive”. It doesn’t matter the problem. Blue Screen of Death? Reformat your hard drive. Number Lock LED burned out? Reformat your hard drive. Its like killing a fly with a sledge hammer. No bloody way am I reformatting my hard drive so don’t even ask.

I found tons of information on the internet…as long as I didn’t nudge or move one molecule on my notebook…or ZZZZT it would freeze up again. I didn’t feel so alone, as it was a fairly well reported problem, so I was irritated as ever that I received no useful information from Mr. No-help. I gathered that either my RAM was bad or one of the slots for the RAM was bad.

Armed with that information, I drove to my friendly big box electronics store and scored some memory. Pharmacy chick wishes that getting BRAIN memory was this cheap and easy! I put the new memory in the first slot and booted ‘er up. It worked for about 2 minutes and when I moved the unit-ZZZZT DEAD. Then I moved it to the second slot and I have tossed my notebook around for about 2 hours without dying.

Chick is not assuming that all is well. BUT, all is certainly improved….at the moment. I got 1G of RAM zipping me all over the internet now and I learned that I will not die a painful death by opening the back of my notebook.

So if I disappear for a while, you can assume my fix……didn’t!

Please God, let this fix work.

Tags: general junk, personal life, rambling, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick has developed a tight relationship over the years with her customers. She learned Dale Carnegie’s tennets of winning friends: Let them talk about themselves and what interests THEM, and listen well. If you love golf, I will ask about your game. If you love to sail, I will ask you if you got to the river last weekend. If you love Nascar, well, I’ll just smile and let you talk. I may not have any interest in golf, sailing or Nascar, but I care enough about you to ask you about your life.

I do not however discuss politics. Now now, nor at anytime in the future will I discuss politics with you, so do not even ask. Thankfully not too many people ask me my opinions about anything other than health issues. I learned a long time ago that when people politely ask me “how are you?” that its purely a rhetorical question and the only answer they want to hear is “Fine, thank you.”.

I only wish “Dan” would learn that lesson. Dan is a tech that blows thru our pharmacy now and then like a bad wind. If you ask him how he is, he will tell you in detail, with great length and flair until you are left glassy eyesdand begging for whatever oxygen remains in the room. If you share a story, he can one-up you. No matter what disease you might have had, he has either had it or know somebody who has. No matter what weird experience you went thru, Dan did it better (or worse) than you did. Go ahead, make up something and he will trump you every time.

Dan also has an opinion, and wants to share it with you. The trouble is, he has no interest in hearing yours. He is vocal and very boorish. If you share a counter-opinion he will turn you off like a switch. He loves to hear himself talk.

(an aside) Around Pharmacy Chick’s pharmacy, sex, religion and politics are off limits. Nothing good can come from talking about it. We are a diverse group here and I know that we do not share the same moral values/political preferences/social backgrounds. It is much better that we discuss work issues at work and non-work issues someplace else. We work in a small space, if somebody doesnt’ get along, there isn’t a good way to separate the feuding parties. You may ask about what I did over the weekend, but any commentary you may have must be kind and polite, even if I told you I went to homophobic hate rally. You slept with your best friends wife? I don’t wanna know. Don’t even go there..

When Dan works, there will be the inevitable subject of politics broached. And, PC will squash it like a bug. If he sees somebody wearing a button supporting some candidate he either likes or dislikes, he will say something. And, PC will shut him down. I had to tell Dan one day that if he makes one more comment to a certain customer about a certain hot issue that I will make him personally apologize to this customer, a public official of some rank.

All that hot air and no release valve–I have to wonder, if I poked him with a pin, would he hiss like a tea pot?

Tags: employees, national news, pharmacy life, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick was internet surfing the other day when she came upon a little news item that yet another major pharmacy and grocery chain was joining the ranks of the apostates and offering the $4 prescriptions on “over 300 drugs”. (bear in mind that warfarin 1,2, 2.5,3,4,5,7.5,and 10mg counts as 8 drugs). I wish I could ask WHY?

Pharmacies have never been known for their intelligent decision making. But this one takes the cake. When Walmart ( I can use their name because its widely known) came out with their $4 offering, I bravely hoped that it would be a passing fad. After all, pharmacy amounts to what? 2% of their business? Who cares if they lose money if they can get Mr Joe Six pack to fill his cart while waiting for his $4 loss leader. Target followed later with their own list. Target is a relatively new player in pharmacy. Now its Kroger. I don’t know much about these guys, they aren’t around my neck of the woods. But Pharmacy Chick is hopping on her soap box for a few observations:

95% of my business is already managed by health insurance. These are people whose prices are already fixed and the rate of reimbursement can be called sucky at best. There are a few precious plans that have a fixed generic copay, $10 for example whether its 100 metformin or 2 lorazepam, its 10 bucks. Why are we giving a PBM incentive to cut our reimbursements even more? Ya’ll think they are blind and won’t notice?

The few cash payers that I have left are snatched up by “discount cards”. What the hell is this? Since when can Quickie Lube and Tire offer a card that decides how much I can or cannot charge for my services? Why did we ever accept this from the start? When I used to work for Joe Independent, he refused the cards. “If its not insurance, I’m not takin’ it!” And he didn’t.

Generic medications were the last bastions of profitibility in the pharmacy. If we bought it for $2 and sold it for $22, we made a tidy $20 gross profit, which was still a great deal over the $99 it would have cost the patient for the brand name. I dont care what you say, there isn’t going to be great profit in some of these auxilliary services like vaccines and MTM, they are too labor intensive. It costs a lot of labor to run those services, and in no time, PBM’s will be cutting reimbursements to is for them too. Just wait, you will see. Why are we buying the rope they are hanging us with?

One of my buddies works in a pharmacy that will price match the $4 when asked. He doesn’t get asked very much cuz he works for a discounter that sells stuff pretty cheaply already. The “when asked” part bugs me. If you are gonna do the $4 deal, either do it or don’t, this sliding scale thing bothers me. That means you have to keep track of Ms C who gets her Lisinopril for $4 and Mrs D who gets hers for $12.99. In fact the whole price matching thing gets me going, but that is a blog on its own, suffice to say that Pharmacy Chick thinks that if you are gonna do this $4 nonsense, either jump in or stay out, sticking your toe in only is gonna cause trouble with customers.

Imagine this, cuz I already have: Its a big conference room, BPOP (Biggest PBM On Planet) is having a meeting with all their decision makers. They have, in front of them, the lists of all the $4 prescriptions that all these players are offering. Mr Big in his bigger suit stands up and addresses the group: “Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here, these jokers have cut their own throats, and we dont have to do it for them. All we have to do is rake in the profits, because effective at next renewal period, all these meds will be contracted at $3.50. If they can accept $4, they will accept $3.50″ HAHAHA, ” Lets go have lunch, and take the rest of the day off, we didnt’ have to earn it, they just gave it to us.”

Its the beginning of the death of pharmacy, and unfortunately for us, this one can only be classified as “suicide”.

Tags: competitors, national news, pharmacy life, prices, ranting | |