-So this has been making the rounds in the Pharmacy world. Technically, it really does *not* take 2 hours to fill a prescription. Especially for Tamiflu. You grab the box off of the shelf and slap a label on it. HOWEVER, there are other things going on in a pharmacy that can lead up to a 2 hour wait. Like to hear it? Here it goes….
10. Your doctor sent over the script via the E-Script system. Other doctors also love to utilize the E-Script system so that means at any given time, your E-Scribed script is one out of many that needs to be typed in at the moment depending on how busy it is. The same applies for faxed in or left on voice mail scripts.
9. You’re standing in line to drop off a prescription. If you’re unlucky, you’re in a line 10 deep and it took you 15 minutes just to reach the counter. If you’re lucky, there isn’t a line because you came before/after the lunch/dinner rush.
8. This is the time of year where Corporate LOVES to cut hours. At *my* pharmacy, that means there’s only 1 Pharmacist and 2 Pharmacy Tech’s working most of the time. Because only the Pharmacist can take care of drug interactions, final review on scripts, patient consultations, give vaccinations and check blood pressure that means we let her/him handle the important stuff and the Tech’s take on the rest of the work load. So there’s only 2 people to take in prescriptions, type prescriptions, handle insurance issues, answer phones, fill prescriptions, put away prescriptions, sell prescriptions at the counter and the drive-thru, delete 10 day old prescriptions and walk out of the pharmacy to show someone where the Mucinex is because they just can’t find it in aisle 11, towards the end of the aisle, on the 2nd shelf from the top, in the blue and white box.
7. On a busy day, we can fill 500 prescriptions. We’re open 14 hours during the week. 14 hours to fill 500 prescriptions. If it’s a slow day or the weekend, it’s about 350 scripts. On the weekend, we’re open 8 hours. 8 hours to fill 350 scripts. That’s between 35 to 44 scripts filled in an hour. Remember, only the Pharmacist can do final review and verify a prescription. Most pharmacies have 1 Pharmacist working at a time. That means my Pharmacist is taking about 2 minutes to make sure each and every prescription she/he verifies is correct and does not interact with anything else you’re taking so it does not kill you. *2* minutes. Let me repeat that: *2* minutes.
6. Oh dear, my replenishment order just came in. I have 11 large totes of drugs that need to be put away. Hopefully, we’ll get that put away before 1pm because that’s the time we tell people to come back when we were out of stock on their medication and had to order it for the next day.
5. Grandpa Hank is on the phone. He wants to know if we can set up delivery for today because it’s too cold for him to come out to the pharmacy. He called at 11:45am. Gotta get his script ready and get online to our courier service by 12 because that’s the cut off for same day delivery.
4. Jane is dropping off prescriptions for her 4 sick children. Unfortunately, Medicaid has enrolled her family under a managed care program, she claims she wasn’t made aware of that and has no current insurance information. We have limited capabilities for looking up insurance information and unfortunately for Jane, nothing is coming up. Being that the children have respiratory infections, it’s important that they get their medication today so that means spending an ungodly amount of time on the phone with Medicaid to find out who her new insurance carrier is.
3. Bob is dropping off a script but has no idea which of his 5 insurance cards is the current one. Time to play musical insurance cards.
2. Jim is dropping off a prescription for Oxycontin 30mg. Now, Jim has never filled prescriptions with us so we have to register him. Jim lives no where near our pharmacy and the doctor’s office is located 2 hours away from us. He’s more than willing to pay cash for 240 tablets. Time to verify that prescription with the doctor. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s bitch! It’s a fake. You don’t say?! Dr. wants the patient arrested. We call the police and the fun really begins when they come rolling in 5 deep, want to speak to everyone involved with the situation and all that jazz that’s involved when they bust someone with fake scripts for C-11 narcotics.
1. Where the hell is my Pharmacist? In the rest room leading the Browns to the Superbowl. She’s been holding it in since 8 am and finally got a chance to do so after spending 20 minutes on hold waiting for the doctor only to confirm that the dose he wrote for Heparin would’ve resulted in an overdose on an infant, spending 15 minutes explaining to a patient that Motrin does not work better than Advil because they’re both Ibuprofen, reviewing and verifying 175 prescriptions, counseling patients and giving 15 vaccinations.
In short, you(collective you) are NOT the only patient. Everything that goes into filling a prescription and the distractions that take you away from filling prescriptions is what causes a long wait. Unfortunately, Corporate cares more about making shareholders happy than ensuring patient safety and properly staffing their pharmacies. Until that changes, it will take as long as necessary to fill a prescription regardless if it takes 15 minutes or 3 hours. If it was as simple as slapping a label on a box, Pharmacists wouldn’t be spending 4-6 years in college and getting over $50,000 in student loan debt just for that simplicity and the FDA would just make such medication readily available over the counter. We’re dealing with peoples lives and a mistake can harm or kill someone, which can result in the pharmacy staff losing their licenses and their jobs, so we’re more concerned about getting the script filled right as opposed to getting the script filled right *now*.
