CVS Pharmacy changes prescription policy after death of Vegas man
From the Article:
LAS VEGAS (KSNV & MyNews3) — Drug store chain CVS is changing its policy because of one Las Vegas father’s actions following the death of his son who couldn’t afford an expensive prescription.
Mitchel Marcus will never know for certain if that medication would have stopped Joshua’s fatal seizure, but the fact that he will spend his entire life wondering is a painful sentence that he wants to spare others.
Joshua began suffering from grand mal seizures six years ago. The loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions plagued his life. “Some of the seizures are so bad that the brain gets so scrambled and the heart goes into an arrhythmia that they just can’t come out of it,” said Mitchel.
Mitchel says a cocktail of prescriptive medicines controlled the frequency. On January 15, Joshua went in for a refill at a CVS branch outside of San Diego, but came up short.
“His medication came out to about $700,” said Mitchel.
Mitchel — who lives in Centennial Hills — tried to pay for it with a card over the phone, but was told it was against CVS’ policy.
NOTE: Father lives in LAS VEGAS… son lives in SAN DIEGO..
and even after this …CVS will still not accept a credit card over the phone to pay for prescription medication… I wonder how their mail order firm gets paid from pts ?
As a result of Mitchel’s persistence with CVS — months of emails and phone calls that reached the vice president — the chain is now finalizing a policy requiring pharmacists at all locations nationwide to offer a bridge supply for patients in an urgent medical need like Joshua’s.
Filed under: General Problems
Jennifer, most CVS pharmacists give more than a rat’s ass. Sorry that your experiences have been less than pleasant. Whatever rules are “made up” are in accordance with some agreement with the DEA, FDA, or state board to avoid fines or worse. If there is a law violation or filling error, the pharmacist will be the first one under the bus. We are not allowed to offer discounts, but a patient can use a AAA card, Good RX, or any other of the many discount cards that can be found online. And, yes, a customer can ask for less than the amount prescribed. Unfortunately, now that meeting the “metrics” defines us, there is little or no time for real patient care.
The potentially important, circumstantial detailsthat are not addressed in this story would only distract us from the real problem with almost every CVS pharmacist I have come across: they just don’t give a rat’s ass. I think this attitude just comes with the territoy of dispensing for a CVS – a company that seems to think there aren’t already enough laws and regs imposed on them from more than half a dozen Federal Agencies, several State Agencies and hundreds of insurance companies…so they make up a bunch of their own additional rules and heap them onto the pharmacists’ shoulders as well. As obnoxious as some of them can be, I try to keep this in mind.
A patient has to be savvy enough to ask for a partial fill in a quantity of meds he CAN afford that day or he will go home empty handed; I highly doubt anybody at CVS would care enough to suggest it to him. That is just awful…but I also think we all bear some responsibility to think and advocate for ourselves, and to never take no for an answer if doing so might have negative health consequences for us. It is a terrible and sad story and I am so sorry for this man’s family.
But, I think perhaps the biggest problem here has been missed by everyone: WHY is Big Pharma charging $700 for a month supply of a medication that controls the very worst kinds of seizure medicine that some people can’t survive without? I don’t understand how we have every other restriction on these drug companies except oversight of what they can charge for life-saving drugs. The business of healing people doesn’t have to be all about money…and in a truly ccivilized society, it wouldn’t.
“Boiler” is right. There is no change in CVS policy. We give “loaners” of meds on an almost daily basis. The son could have purchased a smaller amount or transferred to a pharmacy that would take credit card info over the phone. I think there is much more to the story.
Would a gas station take a credit card over the phone from hundreds of miles away? I dont think so. Sad story though
Cvs in Smyrna Tennessee wouldn’t give air or help for anyone! Have used their pharmacy for years and have only got grief.
Another option would have been for the father to do an virtual gift card online, if they can take the number off of his phone as opposed to a print-out of it?
Granted we don’t have the entire story. I used to sla..er work for CVS, I get the reason for the policy. I understand there are 2 sides to a story. It says the young man came up short…so how short? was there an option to fill up to how much he had on him and then do another fill for the remainder and dad could overnight a check to the pharmacy or do a bank to bank wire transfer to sons account so he could pick up and pay for the rest??? Sorry, but contrary to company belief, life isn’t totally black and white, there are sometimes gray areas where pharmacists need to get creative within the laws, scope of practice and patient safety. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lawsuit in the near future, but I’m sure the lawyers are already on the phone with the young man’s family talking non disclosure settlement.
There is no change in policy whatsoever here. Offering a bridge supply means “offer a three day supply at a reduced cost” – which there’s no reason the pharmacist in question should not have done in the first place. Nor is there any reason, assuming the CVS works the same way as any other chain that I’ve worked at, the father couldn’t have driven to the closest CVS to him, put his credit card under his son’s name, and had them run it that way.
It’s tragic what happened to this poor guy. But that certainly does not mean that anybody should change their policy to “take a 700 dollar charge via credit card over the phone.” It’s like telling them they should take the 400 dollars worth of test strips ordered via credit card through the deaf patient relay system. This is very much a “you don’t work in retail pharmacy, so you don’t understand why this rule is in place” case – I get patients all the time trying to get their controls paid for over the phone by credit card. And yes, this is antiepileptics, but I don’t put it past any of my regular offenders to ring up a 850 dollar tab on someone elses credit card just so they can score some cheap Klonopin.
Would I have accepted the card over the phone? Possibly, depending on how long I’d had the patient in my pharmacy and his history of filling. But that information isn’t present here, and to try to villanize CVS for what is honestly sensible business shows a lack of understanding. There are plenty of other things to villanize CVS about.
Yes, their mail order firm will accept credit card information over the phone. Their mail order supply is done through their caremark insurance, so they have a guarantee that they have accurate information on the customer if they are defrauded that they can send to collections.
Heartbreaking. CVS is trying hard to lose customers. Hope this makes national news