It's taken me five years of searching for the world's best care practices to finally find a pharmacy in the United States that can handle automatically refilling my standard medications each month without any notification from me even if the dosage changes.
This pharmacy is in New York City in Chinatown.
My prescribing doctor and the people who run it are Chinese. The place may as well be in China.
China is looking better and better to head to for treatment.
On the flip side, I've taken the same dose of pain control each month for over a year now, but I ran out TODAY, forcing me to ration, since the script was somehow altered.
I don't know if my doc changed it and forgot to tell me, if I was told and forgot, or if the new computer system screwed it all up.
What I know is it's a long holiday weekend. I discovered I was going to run out on Fri. I made an emergency call to my doc asking him to write and mail a written script. Even if he did it and it got in the mail, which I suspect it didn't, I was too late to save anyway.
Luckily a friend of mine works at the hospital who will pick up a written script for me or I'd be withdrawing today. That's only if whoever is on-call doesn't treat me like a two-bit, drug seeking crack whore from out of town that he's never heard of.
It has happened by a Doctor that had absolutely heard of me. I guess "incurable cancer" is not the excuse it used to be.
But pain management is a sensitive topic so that's a bad example.
My experimental eye drops from Mass. Eye and Ear are gotten in the most similar manner as my Chinese Supplements. The pharmacy mixes it themselves and they only accept payment, no insurance.
The drops expire every 28 days. I must order them every 25 or 26. I use the same credit card every time just like in Chinatown.
The first time I tried to refill they had lost all my credit card information that I asked them to keep on file when I was at my appointment. Ever since then it's been a phone call given them a prescription number.
There is no reason this pharmacy, or Rite Aide where I've been ordering the same medication at the same dosage for years now, can't automatically refill the meds and send them along.
This practice would actually be more lucrative for them. Have you noticed that some subscription magazines no longer just stop coming? Instead they recharge your credit card and one years subscription turns into two or three without you ever really noticing.
That is because convenience is the major driving factor in most people's decisions. Calling to dispute a credit card claim is very inconvenience.
Instead I have to do it their way, online, registering for their service using http://www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/refill_now.jsf If I did it this way, I'd be getting a phone call every other day since none of my medications ever line up at the same time each month for a refill since they aren't prescribed all at the same time.
Ugh, just another obstacle in obtaining cancer patient bliss.
This pharmacy is in New York City in Chinatown.
My prescribing doctor and the people who run it are Chinese. The place may as well be in China.
China is looking better and better to head to for treatment.
On the flip side, I've taken the same dose of pain control each month for over a year now, but I ran out TODAY, forcing me to ration, since the script was somehow altered.
I don't know if my doc changed it and forgot to tell me, if I was told and forgot, or if the new computer system screwed it all up.
What I know is it's a long holiday weekend. I discovered I was going to run out on Fri. I made an emergency call to my doc asking him to write and mail a written script. Even if he did it and it got in the mail, which I suspect it didn't, I was too late to save anyway.
Luckily a friend of mine works at the hospital who will pick up a written script for me or I'd be withdrawing today. That's only if whoever is on-call doesn't treat me like a two-bit, drug seeking crack whore from out of town that he's never heard of.
It has happened by a Doctor that had absolutely heard of me. I guess "incurable cancer" is not the excuse it used to be.
But pain management is a sensitive topic so that's a bad example.
My experimental eye drops from Mass. Eye and Ear are gotten in the most similar manner as my Chinese Supplements. The pharmacy mixes it themselves and they only accept payment, no insurance.
The drops expire every 28 days. I must order them every 25 or 26. I use the same credit card every time just like in Chinatown.
The first time I tried to refill they had lost all my credit card information that I asked them to keep on file when I was at my appointment. Ever since then it's been a phone call given them a prescription number.
There is no reason this pharmacy, or Rite Aide where I've been ordering the same medication at the same dosage for years now, can't automatically refill the meds and send them along.
This practice would actually be more lucrative for them. Have you noticed that some subscription magazines no longer just stop coming? Instead they recharge your credit card and one years subscription turns into two or three without you ever really noticing.
That is because convenience is the major driving factor in most people's decisions. Calling to dispute a credit card claim is very inconvenience.
Instead I have to do it their way, online, registering for their service using http://www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/refill_now.jsf If I did it this way, I'd be getting a phone call every other day since none of my medications ever line up at the same time each month for a refill since they aren't prescribed all at the same time.
Ugh, just another obstacle in obtaining cancer patient bliss.
1 comment:
If ever people who work for pharmacies provide efficient and stress-free pharmacy management services for their clients, they're sure to bring in lots of profits for their owners while still offering much help for those who need it.
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