Theft at the Rx counter ?
After I made the above post, it got me to thinking just how many ways that if a Rx dept staff was determined to divert medication from the Rx dept, just how it could be done while keeping the chances of getting caught to a minimum.
Anyone can go to just about any state’s Board of Pharmacy’s meeting minutes posted on the web and see where a Pharmacist or technician is before the board for diversion of controlled meds.
Clearly the Rx depts across this country are not completely full of a bunch of “saints”
I have had pts tell me about pharmacists doing everything from doing a partial fill .. claiming that is all they have on hand… to confiscating the pt’s prescription and claiming that they are destroying it and “tear it up” in front of the pt.
If a Pharmacist tells the pt that “half” of the amount the prescription is written for is all that is in stock and it is a “take it or leave it” situation. No pharmacy is going to have on hand 100% of the time the medication and quantity for every prescription that is presented.
Does it seem strange that the pharmacy only has “EXACTLY HALF” of what the Rx is written for ? Some states may mandate it, but it is only the best thing for a pharmacist to do is to notify the prescriber that the entire quantity was not provided to the pt. So that when the pt shows up in a couple of week requesting another prescription, they are not viewed as a “drug seeker”.
After the pt pays for their “half” the Rx dept staff goes back and reverses the claim in the pharmacy computer and fill it for the original quantity and put the remaining “half” in their pocket to use/abuse or sell for “extra pocket money”.
The same thing could happen with the Pharmacist “tearing up the prescription” when it fact he/she is just tearing up something that looks like the pt’s prescription.
How can the pt protect themselves ? If you don’t get a explanation from your insurance company about prescriptions that they have paid for on behalf of the pt. wait for maybe a week after the day you were in the pharmacy and look at on line or call the insurance company when is the last time that they paid for the particular medication and the quantity the claim was submitted for… if a claim was submitted for a less quantity…then reversed and resubmitted for a larger quantity… or they paid for the med/quantity/date for the prescription that was supposedly “destroyed” by the pharmacist.
The pt should also ask their prescriber to run a report from the state’s prescription monitoring program and show what med/quantity/date was reported to that database. The should also verify with the prescriber that they were notified that the pharmacy only furnished a partial quantity for the particular prescription.
If the pt doesn’t follow thru on these issues… they could be end up being viewed as a “drug seeker” … wanting early refills, taking more than prescribed and other issues that could get the pt summarily discharged from the practice for things they did not do, nor had any knowledge of what had been done in their name.
Filed under: General Problems
I myself have had run ins with pharmacists doing this exact very thing, how unscrupulous can pharmacists be!! Had I known the steps too take as outlined in this post, the pharmacist who ripped up my prescription would have been standing tall in front of the state board, answering for her deviant actions! Bottom line is, there is more than one way too skin a cat, and I eventually got her fired. One can only HOPE she lost her license, but the reality of it is, she probably works at CVS now, as they ENCOURAGE this kind of aberrant behavior! Now I know how to go about reporting these criminals, thanks to reading Pharmacist Steve’s post. Thank you so much for your hard work, Steve!! Now I know how too counteract these “pharmacists”, should I ever have to get an Rx filled at somewhere other than the mom & pop pharmacy I have a relationship with now. Be PROACTIVE, let these cretins know that you will not stand for this abuse, and THREATEN them with legal action, and most importantly, don’t give in and be a victim, be proactive in your quest for health and happiness!!