Earlier this evening, I got a slightly disturbing call. "Annoying" might be a better choice of words. It was from a pharmacist at the CVS Pharmacy near my home…and I should explain the following. I take a number of prescriptions and I have approximately a third of them filled by a mail order firm, another approximate third filled at a nearby supermarket pharmacy and the rest by the CVS Pharmacy near where I live. Why do I divide my business up like this? Here's why…
- The mail order firm is connected to my health insurance and they fill what I have them fill at very reasonable prices and in most cases, they'll give me a 90-day supply which is much handier than dealing with monthly renewals. Of course, it sometimes takes a while for my medicines to arrive.
- The supermarket pharmacy doesn't take my health insurance but on several — not all but several — medications I take, their price is way cheaper than the mail order pharmacy.
- The CVS Pharmacy is, as I mentioned, near my house.
A year or so ago, I found it was valuable to me to take the time to go online with the mail order pharmacy and the supermarket pharmacy and look up what each drug I take costs through them. It took about a half hour but sending certain prescriptions to one pharmacy and certain ones to the other is now saving me a couple thousand dollars a year. I am not exaggerating.
And when a doctor of mine prescribes something they want me to begin taking immediately, I have them phone it in to the CVS, where because I use my health insurance there, it's the same price as the mail order firm only I get it right away. If it turned out to be one of those prescriptions that's way cheaper at the supermarket pharmacy, I could switch it from CVS over to there but so far, that hasn't happened.
If this sounds confusing, just forget about it. All you need to know is that CVS only fills about a third of my prescriptions.
So I get this call from a pharmacist there who says he and the CVS computer system have looked at my medical record and determined that there's a certain medicine I'm not taking that may help me. He wants permission to call my physician and discuss it and, I guess, talk my physician into prescribing it for me. Apparently, they do this a lot but it's the first time I've gotten one of these calls. I probably don't have to explain why this bothered me but I will anyway…
A pharmacy is supposed to dispense what doctors order. The folks at the pharmacy know how to do that but they know very little about me, my body, my medical hisory…pretty much everything about me. Oh, yeah — they also know my birthdate. Every time I get pills or ointment from them, they ask me over and over for my birthdate, which is a tremendously secure way to make sure I am who I say I am. After all, my date of birth is only known to me and anybody who looks at my Wikipedia page.
(It's like when you buy something at a store with a credit card and they ask you for your zip code. That's a good way to make certain that anyone who has stolen my credit cards has also stolen my driver's license.)
The folks at CVS have never taken my blood pressure, checked my sugar, done an EKG on me, listened to my lungs, peered into my ears with a flashlight, had me say "Ahh," had me turn my head and cough…anything. My physician has done all that…and they want to tell him what they think I need? If that's useful then I have the wrong physician.
I doubt they can arrive at any informed medical conclusions by looking at a list of what my doctors have prescribed but even if they can, they only have a partial list. And that partial list doesn't tell them if I'm already taking that particular drug they think I should be taking. I'm not because it's a drug to which I happen to have a very severe allergy. It is most definitely not a drug I should be taking.
My physician is a great guy and I trust him. He's also one of the busiest people on this planet. He doesn't need someone who studied a lot less medicine that he did wasting his time phoning to say, "We see your patient occasionally experiences headaches. May we suggest you prescribe a remedy called aspirin?"
After I got off the phone call an hour or so ago, I thought for a few minutes, started writing this and then decided to call back on the phone number that my Caller I.D. said the call was from. I wanted to make sure he really was with the CVS Pharmacy and this wasn't a scam spoofing their name. Since I qualified for Medicare, I get a lot of calls from organizations trying to sound like an official arm of Medicare, getting me to let them send me something they've decided I need…oh, and they need to confirm my Medicare number so they can bill Medicare.
The call allegedly from CVS was indeed from CVS. I reached the man who'd called and we had a nice conversation that calmed me down to the point that I could finish writing this. Why did he call me? Because the computer there told him to call me. He didn't say this but I got the feeling he thinks he should be filling prescriptions instead of making these calls.
Tomorrow when the CVS Customer Bitching Line is open, I'm going to call up and add my voice to the list of folks who think a drug store should not be doing this. If there isn't already a long list, something's wrong. That will probably keep me up all night fretting and that in turn will cause CVS to call up and ask if they can phone my doctor to suggest sleeping pills.