Woke up on the wrong side of the bed

I was a bit tired this morning. Instead of getting up to work out on my elliptical machine ( Precor 5.17) for my morning torture routine, I slapped at the snooze button several times and listened to the radio. Plus, both knees were feeling a little sore as I have recently increased the intensity of my routine, so an extra day of rest might help them recover.

Anyhow, as I'm listening to the pointless drivel of the morning DJ, there were several ads for one of the national chains. Pharmacy God worked for Rite Aid right after graduating. When I worked there, we never had any of the gift card promotions. In fact, we always laughed when we would see a chain offer the promo. Apparently they were really hurting for business.

K-Mart was one of our local competitors. About every three months they would offer a $25 gift card for any new or transferred prescription. I had a technician who would transfer all of her husband's inexpensive prescriptions over to K-Mart during the promo (she had a $1 copay), collect about $200 worth of gift cards, then transfer them back the next month. During the time that we worked together, she was able to purchase a vacuum, exercise bike, camera, television, and home theater system just from the gift cards. I wonder why K-Mart had so much financial trouble a few years ago?

But back to today. Rite Aid is now offering a $30 gift card on transferred prescriptions, plus a $5 card for your first two refills on the prescription. At least they are doing something to capture the future fills on the prescription.

But what about the pharmacy staff? Did anybody check with them before rolling out this great plan? Let's take a look at what the pharmacy staff must do now:

• maintain the PSE log
• maintain a hypodermic needle log
• maintain an exempt narcotics log
• maintain a poison log
• recommend OTC products
  
• report all controlled substance prescriptions to the state's central database
• call iPledge for all isotretinoin prescriptions
• distribute MedGuides on each and every dispensing of certain medications
• make sure that each prescription has the correct format according to state regulations. Call the physician if any information is missing.
• call patient insurance companies to find out why the claims are not being covered
• perform prospective DURs on all new prescriptions
  
• call physicians to get refills because the patient can't read NO REFILLS REMAINING on the bottom of their bottle, even though they have had the bottle for a month.
• maintain records of all purchases by the pharmacy department
• counsel patients on new prescriptions as mandated by OBRA 90
• call physician offices to obtain prior authorizations for medications
• call back in three days to remind physician about the P/A
• field phone calls from irate patients who don't understand their insurance copays
• plus several other things that I can't think of right now
• and oh yeah, fill 350-400 prescriptions accurately

But will the pharmacists say anything? Nope. That $40,000 sign-on bonus keeps the mouths shut. It's amazing how so many PROFESSIONALS agree to be treated like crap in exchange for money.

Do the local and state pharmacy organizations say anything? HA. Do they do anything but sit around pass resolutions on how to advance the roll of the clinical pharmacist in an advanced, multi- disciplinary health care practice model?

The state pharmacy board doesn't have the legal authority to look out for the profession. All they can do is suspend your license if you forget to give out an NSAIDMedGuide to one of your patients, even though he has been taking naproxen since 1997.

And the national pharmacy organizations are just that.... organizations. They don't care about the individual pharmacists. Unless the pharmacist has some new insight on how to expand the role of the clinical pharmacist in dosing and monitoring aminoglycosides in COPD patients awaiting uvula transplants from non-sibling donors.



Thank you, Rite Aid.

For helping destroy the profession.


One gift card at a time.