Pharmacy Employees Said Competitor Won’t Transfer Prescriptions
When the Lifechek pharmacy closed, all patient files were transferred to CVS
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A small pharmacy is battling a larger national pharmacy for customers. CVS recently bought out two Lifechek pharmacies, one in Elsa and one in San Juan.
Many of the former employees of the shutdown pharmacy are working for DLS pharmacy in McAllen. Those employees said many of their Lifechek customers want to follow them to their new business, but CVS will not transfer the prescriptions.
Nearly every customer CHANNEL 5 NEWS approached at the CVS on Raul Longoria in San Juan was a new pharmacy client.
Former Lifechek Customer Jose Martinez said, “They are just giving me my medicine. It’s been eight days. After ordering my medicine, I just got it now, and I’m still missing some of them.”
Martinez was a longtime customer of Lifechek pharmacy, more commonly known as San Juan Pharmacy.
Doors to the Lifechek Pharmacy are closed. They went out of business more than two weeks ago. All the patient files transferred to CVS, but those patients have the right to transfer their prescriptions to another pharmacy if they want to.
Many former Lifechek employees work at DLS pharmacy in McAllen.
“So we know most of these customers. They liked our services back then, and they like our services now,” said Pharmacy Tech Ramiro Silva. He said about 30 patients have asked DLS to fill their prescriptions.
Those transfers can only be done pharmacist to pharmacist. Silva said when his pharmacist calls CVS “they tell us that they’re real busy. They’ll get back to us in a couple of hours, and you know, 24 hours pass by and we still won’t get them.”
CHANNEL 5 NEWS reached out to the CVS corporate office. CVS Public Relations Director Mike DeAngelis said, “Absolutely. Any patient who wants to transfer their prescription to another pharmacy, we’re happy to facilitate that.”
They said they received an unusually high number of transfer requests from DLS. When CVS called to confirm with a few of those patients, CVS said not all of those patients wanted their files transferred.
“So we told that pharmacy that you know we’re going to be confirming with patients before we do any additional transfers,” DeAngelis said.
When asked if all these transfers that were requested by the patient, Silva said, “By the patients, yes ma’am. We cannot transfer legally without the patient consent.”
This small pharmacy said they just want to service their longtime clients like Guadalupe Martinez.
“The problem is that there is a delay in giving me the medicine. It took one or two weeks, and those medicines are needed,” said Martinez.
Martinez finally got his prescriptions transferred to the pharmacy of his choice.
Something both big and small businesses agree he has the right to do.
CVS said the law requires all patient files be transferred to the pharmacy acquiring another that is shutting down. As soon as the acquisition process is complete, patients have the right to transfer their files to another pharmacy.
Ladislao Cardenas is the pharmacist for DLS pharmacy. He said he has filed complaints on CVS with the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
Anyone can file a complaint on a specific pharmacist or pharmacy.
Link: Texas State Board of Pharmacy – File a Complaint
Filed under: General Problems
This post described my day at work today. I work for another chain drugstore and we are losing a lot of patients to CVS because they require the patient uses their retail location or mail order. For whatever reason the patient is unaware of this restriction, which is frustrating to them. What frustrated me today is I called CVS 3 or 4 times and was left on an extended hold and finally when I got a person to help me I was informed I would have to call back because the pharmacist was busy. I tried to do the transfer for 2 hours before giving up and making a note to do in the morning. I am a pharmacist and I understand and work in retail….. However I try to make helping my colleges a priority because it is common courtsy. I never did speak to the pharmacist