Edit: sorry, the pic was lost during a site upgrade.
Because of the long holiday weekend, we had to do a big order of our top 200 drugs, a large percentage of which are birth controls. The above is a picture of all the birth control we got in on Friday. (can you tell my pharmacy prefers Barr generics?)
I already hate UHC because they manage my insurance (which is why my Advair script is $140 a month, and why I don’t take it anymore). Now, I have a new reason to hate them:
Last week on Thursday, we had a patient, (call her Ms. Goodman) call in her prescription for zonisamide #150 capsules. Of course, we didn’t have enough, so I asked her if she’d be willing to wait until Friday to pick it up. She was fine with it, so I processed the script and placed it on order.
When it came in, though, our supplier had switched us to a different manufacturer, so I had to back out the script, and rebill it for the corrected NDC.
A week rolls by, and we get a call from a frantic Ms. Goodman because she got a letter from UHC stating that we had billed them twice for the same medication, and if she actually got two fills, she owed them $139.
So, I called Medco, the company that processes prescriptions for UHC, where the nice Indian lady, after saying “Thank you for patiently waiting,” confirmed that the first claim was reversed.
So, I called UHC itself to see what was going on, and all they could tell me was that I had to call Medco.
So I hung up and called the patient to tell her what was going on. She told me she had called UHC and they told her that their system showed two claims.
Well, I called UHC again, and finally got someone to confirm that, but they told me I had to call Medco to have them retransmit the reversal. At this point I was ready to pull my hair out.
So, I called Medco again, and all I could get them to do was “document” the situation in their system, because “UHC should be able to see it in their system if I can see it in mine.” But he told me he would see if he could get someone to fix it.
I was at least able to get the rep’s name (Richard, if I were to actually believe him) and ID number, which I then gave to Ms. Goodman. She thanked me for everything I did, but I’m afraid it wasn’t enough.
Yesterday at work I had Beatles’ songs stuck in my head all day, from Hey Jude, to Yesterday, to the afore mentioned All You Need is Love.
And after the disaster that work was yesterday, I agree with that particular song: we need more love in this world.
Let’s see, I got yelled at (I don’t just mean they were annoyed, they actually raised their voice) at least twice. One time was because a druggie insisted that the last time he got his lorazepam rx filled, it cost him $22, and was angry that this time it cost $73. (I checked the computer; he paid the same price last month.)
The next time was when I was ringing a lady out for her 3 antidepressants, Cymbalta 30mg, Effexor XR 75mg, and brand Wellbutrin SR 200mg, which, of course, we had had to order (the reason she picked them up on Friday and not Thursday).
As soon as I told her the total was $105, she went ballistic: “IT”S ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE $15! I WANTED GENERICS ON EVERYTHING!”
After calmly explaining that the first two drugs don’t come as generic, I explained to her that we had a note that said she wanted brand on the Wellbutrin, and that was the only reason she had to wait until Friday to pick it up, since (at the time) we had generic in stock.
Well, she calmed down somewhat, but got angry again when I had to tell her that we had already dispensed our supply of the generic Wellbutrin, and we wouldn’t have more until Tuesday (due to the Memorial Day weekend). So I offered to see if another store had it, which they did.
Me: Ok, Ma’am, the [Capital City] store has it.
Lady: So when will it be here?
Me: Umm, that’s not how it works. You have to go there to pick it up or wait until Tuesday for me to order it.
I thought, Yeah, some magical fairy is going to whisk the drug away from the other store and make it appear on my shelf. She, of course, wasn’t happy to have to drive to the other store. I, on the other hand, was just happy to get her out of my store.
Can’t I get a little more love?
My pharmacy chain just got the ability to eFax, or electronically request prescription refills. Up until now, we’ve had to print out a refill request form, put it on the fax machine (or in the case where we don’t have a fax number, call the doctor’s office), type in the number, and hope it goes through. (This is especially annoying because if it doesn’t go through the first time, our machine re-dials the last successfully dialed fax number.)
So what does this really mean? Well now, all I have to do is press (let me count them, 1, 2…) 5 keys, and a request is automatically send to the doctor’s office, either by fax or by SureScript (basically a secure email). A paper record automatically prints out, so we have a way of keeping track of requests we’ve made.
I haven’t played with all of the features yet, but I did manage to figure out how to put a note on one, specifically requesting a new rx with a reported increase in dose on a kid’s Pepcid rx. Let’s see how well it actually works.
One thing I don’t like is that on the faxed version, which the doctor has to manually fax back to us, the “refills” field doesn’t make it clear whether the doctor is authorizing say, 2 total refills, or this refill plus 2 (for a total of 3) like the old way does.
Oh well, I guess we’ll see how well it works. My hopes are high, so chances are, I’ll be disappointed.
