Years now I have been going to CVS store # 9859. I will willingly specify it! I know the Pharmacy manager there, Ron. He offered me a position several years back, shortly before my car accident, the one that changed my life, and I turned him down. Why? Because my manager at my home store promised me 40 hours and a raise... The raise was small, and the 40 hours soon dropped to 35 and then less than that... My loyalty was very misplaced. But that I misplaced my loyalty and had that car accident, I was forced to reconcile my entire outlook on life and the way that I viewed things and how I am forced to behave and stand up for myself and speak up.
I do sort of regret not taking the job though, especially when I have days like today, 8/27/14 though, when I see how crappy the service has become at his store. His store used to be a model store, and now it is a piece of shit, breaking so many rules, regulations, recommendations, and committing so many violations it is quite alarming. I have been warning the pharmacy employees for months now that I was going to contact the higher ups if they continued breaking policies and protocols, and after today, I realized that I really needed to. They endangered my life for the last time. And yes, I said endangered my life.
Medications are prescribed for various reasons, and sometimes they are prescribed for reasons that are to help life-threatening conditions such as high blood pressure, seizures, pain that might be so severe it could cause a heart attack, and so many other things. As a pharmacy technician I know that when I go to the doctor I need to keep track of how many prescriptions I am getting from the doctor, and then how many are the pharmacy giving me. What did the doctor prescribe, what is the pharmacy giving me? Also if the doctor writes out the prescription I always make sure to check that they don't forget anything like directions, dose, amount, date, my name, you know, things like that. You might be surprised.
So today I was given a prescription for a higher dose an anti-seizure medication which goes by the brand name of Topamax, also know as, topirimate. I already had been on it, at a much lower dosage, any idiot obviously could see it was a new prescription at a higher dose. Per CVS policy this is what should have been done, and as a good employee this is what I would have done if I had received the prescription.
The RX came in, but my the time it came in, it has exceeded the "monthly fill limit" for Gold Coast, which is the Medicaid program for California. Now I would have "cashed it out" which would have caused an "action note" to be printed. Here is what this means. A monthly fill limit is a limit put on the number of medications Medicaid patients in California may have filled per month. Cashing out a prescription is choosing to not run it through insurance any more, and run it through as "cash" which makes the paper that comes with your RX come out with a form that needs to be filled out, which is called an "action note", instead of advertising about flu shots, or ready fill, or minute clinics.
An action note is one of the most controversial thing that you will find in CVS pharmacies. Countless lazy employees will cash out prescriptions, meaning that they see the insurance rejection, and the form is printed out, and instead of simply writing on there why it didn't go thru insurance, they leave it blank, let alone bother to try to complete the rest of it! Also when someone cashes something out without doing the action note- something will appear like it is ready and it is all OKAY to the person checking it for the patient, up until the patient comes to pick it up... then it is discovered that there is a problem.
SO- one writes down why it didn't go through insurance, and then, what I would do as a competent employee, would go to the next line on the form of the 'action note.' You try to contact the patient, and if you can't, you leave a message, or write why you couldn't reach the patient, but you make an attempt. This store has constantly received prescriptions from my doctors and just stuck them on hold because there were insurance problems, and instead of 1. trying to fix the problems, 2 calling the doctor/insurance as is THEIR JOB to fix the problem if that is how it needs to be resolved or FINALLY 3 needing to contact me because it is not going to be filled, or cannot go through the insurance---they have contacted me a grand total of TWO times. I recall both times. One time was Alex, who is a very nice young man, whom I met on his first day there, I actually aided him a bit on finding his way thru the system. (God- it is still muscle memory for me.) The other time was a girl, who I don't think works there any longer.
Before I go further let me explain pharmacy techs jobs a little more. When things reject in insurance it is the job of the pharmacy worker to try to solve the issue-- today when I asked about solving my problem about the monthly limit- I asked if Medicaid still did TARs (Treatment Authorization Referrals) that the pharmacy has to do, or is a P.A. (Physician Authorization), required for the monthly fill limit to be fixed-- I was told to call to fix it.... when it is entirely the pharmacy technicians job. I do not have an NPI. I do not have a DEA number either. How am I supposed to deal with Medicaid? Especially when it is no longer my job? Countless other times I have also come to pick up items that were supposed to be ready only to find that they were, yes, on hold, not yet filled, because they were not filled and the action note (you know with the contact the patient part done) and I couldn't ask the idiot technician handling the prescription what insurance were they trying because I have a couple in my file due to some reasons and sometimes the computer messes up and will assign like the Topamax card to try to pay for something else that is not Topamax, and the moron handling the prescription just sees that itis rejected by insurance, puts it on hold, and makes no attempt to contact the patient... who is me.
So because today when I called to fill my anti-depressant, which given that I've been dealing with serious PTSD lately, and I have bad depression, it is an important medicine, and check to see if my seizure RX was received and filled, imagine my disdain when I found out that the seizure medicine was on hold... and no one had even contacted me to tell me hey- it didn't go through insurance. The person on the phone actually had the audacity to tell me that I could not fill my anti-depressant until the first of the month because I had exceeded my fill limit! I was astounded, offended, shocked, and disgusted. This person actually I think broke law if I recall correctly because they advised me to go off a prescription medication for 2 days... That is medical advice-- Only pharmacists can give that.
I asked if I had anything that was already prepared and not yet picked up, and I was told that yes, there were 2 RXs ready but not yet picked up, so I requested that they be returned and the person on the phone was upset at me! I am now a patient, and I was making a request that two medications that were "as needed" in the directions be put back so I could fill two medications that were one important to my mental health and one direly important to my physical health, and I was getting flack? How dare they?! For starters they had no right, because the seizure medication should have already been filled, and I should had been called when it didn't go through the insurance, but because this store is full of lazy employees, they rather just see the insurance reject it, and they put the RX "on hold" or not filled, and just lying in wait in the system, and so there is no way that the patient will EVER know about it.
How many prescriptions are CVS pharmacy employees putting on hold, like so many of mine, because they are too lazy to fill out the action notes of why it didn't go through insurance, contacting the patient and telling them that it didn't go through insurance-or even before that- trying to SOLVE the insurance problem. I mean how many RXs are going on hold because technicians get a refill of an important heart medication or cancer medication approved but somehow a discount card for a skin cream gets put as the primary insurance and so it rejects in the insurance, and they put it on hold, the patient calls to see if their medicine is ready, and no, it will never be ready. There is a reason that CVS has policies to contact patients when refills are denied, when insurances reject, and automated calls go out to patients when things are ready, safety, safety and convenience.
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