PHARMACIST STEVE

This is a comment made on the following post on my blog

Former CVS tech comes forward about lying to pts

This particular blog post has a total of a 187 comments since Feb 2015… This post may have the highest number of comments to a single post than any of the other  27,500 number of post on my blog.

“I went to have my prescription filled yesterday and was told they only had enough to fill half of it. So i called today to get the remainder.and was told it was to early to fill it . when they owed me half of my prescription for not having it in stock.”

According to the IP address of the person making this comment he/she lives in FLORIDA.  My understanding is that the DEA has changed the 72 hr to fulfill a partial C-II fill or forfeit the balance and in place there is now a 30 day period to get the balance, BUT.. a state has to change their state law to conform to the DEA law for it to be legal within a particular state and Florida has not done this.. so the 72 hr period remains in effect for Florida.

Under such situation(s) a pt needs to protect themselves. This could be as simple as the pharmacist wanting to impose their belief that the pt “does not need all of those opiates” and uses the excuse of “not enough inventory” and then one day later – “too early to refill”  This would suggest that it was the Pharmacist’s arbitrary interference with the pt getting the total number of doses that the prescriber had written for.

I was at a FL Board of Pharmacy meeting in June 2015 when a chronic pain doc asked the attorney for the BOP if it was illegal for a pharmacist to lie to a pt about having inventory on hand and the attorney responded that he was not aware that “issue” was not addressed in the state’s pharmacy practice act. So in FL, it would appear that UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT has a pretty high bar to be crossed in order to be accused/charged with UNPROFESSIONAL CONDUCT.

It could also be a situation of a pharmacist and/or technicians having a scheme of diverting opiates without it showing up on the store’s inventory. Remember that C-II opiates can have a “street value” of up to $1/mg.

What is a pt to do ? The pharmacy staff could have originally filled the Rx for HALF of the quantity written… and then reversed the claim and refilled it for the original amount and given and charged the pt for HALF of the Rx and pocketed/diverted the balance of the Rx.

Pt needs to call their insurance company and see what was actually billed by the pharmacy.  Verifying both the quantity and days supply was correctly submitted.

By law, the pharmacist/pharmacy is required to notify the prescriber of the quantity provided was less than was prescribed, if not… the pt could find themselves being accused of taking more medication than prescribed when they show up in two weeks instead of four requesting a new prescription.

Pt needs to ask that the prescriber run a state PMP report (Prescription Monitoring Program) that shows how many doses and the days supply that was submitted and if the report tracks if the Rx was paid for by insurance or cash .

Most chain stores have a dept called “loss prevention dept” and they would be interested in evidence that would suggest that their employees are involved in diversion of controlled meds.

If there is diversion involved, that could involve complaints to the BOP, DEA, Insurance company or Medicare/Medicaid if appropriate

Filed under: General Problems