Teen can’t get chemotherapy drug due to CVS issue
An Iowa family is furious. Their daughter is battling cancer. She is on a very strict drug maintenance program.
When they went to pick up her chemotherapy drugs, they ran into one hurdle after another.
“She asked me if she was going to die. That was the hardest,” said Makayla Umphreys, Gracie’s mom.
Makayla recalls day one-when she learned her 15-year-old daughter, Gracie, had Leukemia.
Doctors put Gracie on a nine cycle treatment plan that would stretch over several months.
She takes a combination of drugs on an intricate schedule.
“She has three chemotherapy drugs that she takes at various times throughout the cycle, and one cycle is 85 days,” said Makayla.
It was during cycle five-the Umphreys say-that their pharmacy they have used for years, CVS, dropped the ball.
It was on Gracie’s prescription for ATRA, or Tretinol. It’s the *main* drug in Gracie’s fight against Leukemia.
“I get a phone call from a pharmacist at CVS asking if I knew the prescription was going to be moved to their Specialty Pharmacy…no I didn’t of course. I didn’t even know they had such a thing I’d never even heard of it before,” said Makayla.
Makayla says a few days later, she got a call from that Specialty Pharmacy. In some sense it felt like the whole cancer fight was starting all over.
They started asking her all the basic questions again-her daughter’s birth date, height, her weight…
“It frustrated me at first because if anybody should know all this it should be her doctor and her pharmacy,” said Makayla.
But Makayla says she answered all the questions-and was told the ATRA would be called into her CVS.
The next day-on her lunch break-she went to pick it up.
“Over the course of an hour, they tell me that they can’t get it processed yet. They did verify they had the medicine at the pharmacy,” said Makayla.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Gracie.
Makayla waited inside for one hour-she says only to be told the Specialty Pharmacy said she didn’t answer all of their questions.
This was news to her.
“We didn’t get cut off. No one tried to call me back,” Makayla said.
“I don’t get why they didn’t fill my prescription and give me my Atra,” said Gracie.
At this point, Makayla says she was frustrated but the pharmacy promised to sort it out and asked her to come back later that day.
Once again, she did.
“I went through the drive-thru because that’s all I needed and they told me they still didn’t have it,” she said.
Malorie Maddox asks, “And you were never given a reason as to what the hold up was?” “Nope. I still don’t know,” said Makayla.
Desperate-at this point-Makayla started calling around to find somewhere to fill her daughter’s chemotherapy prescription.
UNMC was immediately able to help.
“They even offered to meet me somewhere with it which was wonderful,” said Makayla.
Makayla is speaking out in hopes it helps others. She says there should never be an issue in getting chemotherapy drugs.
“I think at the very least for them to review their system,” she said.
WOWT 6 News reached out to CVS. They issued us this statement:
“We apologize to the Umphreys family for the delay they experienced in filling their daughter’s prescription. The dispensing of the medication in question was recently moved to our specialty pharmacy service, which handles medications that treat complex health conditions and provides patients with expert clinical support for complex drug therapies.
Our Specialty Connect program is designed to provide our retail pharmacy customers who require specialty medications with access to specialized clinical support and the flexibility to pick up their prescriptions in-store or have them delivered to their home.
Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication the registration process for the Specialty Connect program was not completed properly, which led to the delay in filling the prescription. We have contacted the family to apologize and to explain our specialty pharmacy service.
We are also addressing the miscommunication issue internally, and we are reinforcing the process our pharmacies should use to ensure that patients do not experience any delays in obtaining their specialty medications.”
Filed under: General Problems
I think part of the growing problem (and yes, it is growing) is that CVS (as well as other pharmacies) are hiring these inexperienced pharmacists that just graduated. These people with little education and haven’t even finished developing mentally (scientifically proven that brain is still growing until age 24), are the ones who are replacing the older, more educated pharmacists with more experience.
I really hope that CVS and all these other chains start seeing that they can’t be beholden to the stock holders and claim that their patients are most important. The DM’s and the pharmacy supervisors only care about their bonuses and the numbers which is why they are hiring in these morons.
I can hardly wait until the visa program is expanded (per the white house) and we get in more unqualified Pharmacists to take care of patients.
Wait till the newly arrived Syrian Pharmacists start working for CVS and other large chains. Independent pharmacists this is your opportunity. Just posts signs saying English spoken here.
People should just quit using CVS for anything. I hope this family sticks it to them. It would be really funny if everyone boycotted the whole CVS chain for 2 weeks just to set an example
Why only two weeks? A permanent boycott is what is needed.