I hope this finds its way to your eyes quickly as this situation comes with clear public safety concerns and knowing law violations by pharmacy personnel; whether it goes beyond that is perhaps something you may have heard about. My regular pharmacy fills my monthly meds for chronic pain; there have been a couple of past incidents where the script is not filled until the next day but luckily I am usually prepared for that event and thus did not give it much consideration. On February 17, 2016 I dropped off two scripts, one for Tramadol and one for Hydrocodone5/325. I was told by the tech, Hasan, that they were having trouble getting the Vicodin that day but, ” Not to worry; it would be filled after 12:30″. I asked him if he was sure because of the other techs stopped and threw him an incredulous look. Hasan assured me it wouldn’t be a problem. After 3 PM I had received their text that my Tramadol but still hadn’t heard about the hydro so I called and Ty answered. He told me that it would Not be ALLOWED to be filled until the next day because they ran it thru my insurance and it was denied. Ty said the script was essentially useless unless kept at their pharmacy and held until the next day- they hijacked my legal prescription! But wait, the story gets better, I should mention at this point that my pain chronicles a history of an accident 5 years ago, two surgeries, trials of of these and other medications some of which have made me violently ill, an entire rearrangement of my life in a manner I would not wish on anyone and now set to begin physical therapy round 5- pain meds are a necessity not a band aid. The next morning, February 18, I called The pharmacy as Ty directed me to do to get them started early on filling my order. I spoke to Hasan who said it could now be filled. I asked him what caused the hold up and he spun a web of lies in one minute that I couldn’t even keep track of- the one that really got under my skin was when he said the pharmacist on duty did not WANT to fill it. When I asked why I was told that because I was a ” regular” and I took a lot of medications the pharmacist did not want to risk losing his license over my order/ it was too early too fill/ there was a problem with the Dr./ etc) 
After hearing his litany of complete fabrications, insulting to the integrity of my doctors and myself, I called the AZ Pharmacy Board, my Dr. And my insurance all of whom helped me decode Hasan’s lies and essentially catch him with all of the evidence collected on my phone. The previous day, according to my insurance, they did not get the opportunity to approve or deny( they would have approved it) my hydro because someone at the pharmacy entered it to my insurance and then reversed it 5 minutes later. They put it in and yanked it back out and afterwards ( I know because I have a timeline thanks to my iPhone) deliberately told me my script was denied and was rendered useless because of the denial. I could have and should have been given it back if they could not fill it. My question is, do you think there is more to this scam than what I have told you? Might they have filled my order the day before during that 5 minutes ( they had a ” floating pharmacist on duty and there is obviously no oversight or management there. They do not know anyone’s name or know who the store managers are, etc)? I have a call in to the DEA but is this something you have heard about?
Thank you for any assistance,
If any one is interested.. this particular situation is involving a Rx dept within the LARGEST BIG BOX chain in the country… based in Arkansas
Filed under: General Problems
Also I don’t know if it is happening other places, but here in Fl. many of the small independent pharms. are engaged in price gouging bigtime!!
They will take your ins. for all other meds. except opioids, mainly oxycodone. I understand that pharms. may have to pay extra to get this med. & ins. have not raised the amount they are paying & I have no problem paying what my ins. does not cover; but where are they getting them from, drug dealers?
My oxyir 30mg. x 2 per day was $25 w/ins.for 28 day supply for years!
Now the cheapest I can find is $675 for exact same thing! I now have to get them compounded where they add ginger & naloxone and even though I’m told that those 2 xtra do not change it at all as they are only there as a deterrent for abuse (injecting & snorting) but since I have been on them I have bad heartburn, minor headaches, & noticeably less pain relief that wears off faster & they cost me $232 per mo.!
Plus many of them are bundling, which means that you have to have 3 non control rx filled for every 1 control rx you fill! So, most CPP’s take 1 long acting pain med. & 1 break thru med. & just for those 2 now have to fill at least 6 more meds. many of which you don’t need or use, just to get the meds. you do need! I just don’t know how much longer that I can afford all of this!
I thought price gouging & bundling was illegal & even my ins. co. said that they are not allowed to do this; but no one is stopping them & I have not seen this addressed anywhere, why?
This kind of thing happens all the time; but because we are CPP’s, no one cares! At my CVS, their was a tech. that got busted for selling addresses of patients that got certain meds. There was another that was shorting pills; but because of the meds. we take, we are seen as liars, so if we are short 4 or 5 pills, we just have to deal with it or they will stop filling & flag you so that other pharms. will not fill for you either!
One mo. I was unable to pick up my meds. & had my daughter pick them up. I usually would sort my meds. into a monthly dose box to keep everything straight as pain meds. are only a small part of the meds. vit.&sup. I take. However this time, it was about a week before I was able to get them sorted in the box. I found that I was missing 30 40mg oxycontin!
I figured that I was just really screwed as I knew that they would NEVER believe me & while I do understand that they get lied to about this kind of thing a lot; they also need to realize that sometimes it’s true!
Just as expected, they were rude & rolled their eyes & asked why it took a week to notice as I should have noticed that many pills were missing right away & BLAH, blah..
Long story short, after counting down their supply, they found they were over by 35 pills (I was missing 30, so someone else got shorted also) They claimed it was a new pharm. that thought my rx was mistaken because oxycontin was ONLY to be taken every 12hrs.(2 per day) & my rx said to take 1 every 8 hrs. which according to this new pharm. was way too much & very dangerous! Had he taken the time to look at my 10+yr. history of using the same CVS & that I had been on the same dose from same doc for 6yrs. or even called my doc, this would have saved a lot of worry & time!
Instead of the pharm. getting in trouble for clearly breaking the law, I was told 2mo. later that they could no longer fill my meds. due to DEA rules that the doc writing had to be within a 5 -10mi. radius of my CVS! Which is complete BS as I called the DEA, Fl pharm. board, & CVS corp. & NONE had ever heard of such a rule!
They are just making up rules to justify anything they want & they get away w/it because we are seen as just a bunch of junkies!! I wish we could get CPP’s together & bombard corp. of all these big chain pharms. w/ letters & protest in front of their stores!!!
I have had the same thing happen a couple of times over the years and is why i always ask for a count tray and check my oxycodone count if it is not my regular pharmacist, always seems about 50% of the time if it a fill in pharmacist filling the script it comes up short, as in the past 2 years there have been 4 times where it was not my reg pharm and on 2 of those times they came up short but as i was right there they replaced them
Sounds to me like Hasan might have had another buyer for the pills. How many of these so called professionals are doing this kind of thing in order to trick the system and not show a delinquent inventory and sell them out the back door. Fact is that there needs to be an investigation at this store.
I believe it is a scam all right but a lot more sophisticated than what is described here. The CDC was being lobbied by the ‘Rehab Complex’ and the pharmaceutical companies benefit when they can sell us patented, purported, pain medications. Even the government cooperates with these types scams likely because they get kick backs and can invest in either the next patented blockbuster drug or the ‘rehab complex’ or both.
It is going on all the time, in senior living they force antipsychotics on seniors because Medicare will pay top dollar. This is what this country has become, ‘crony capitalism’, ‘predatory capitalism’ and ‘vulture capitalism’. It’s all about controlling the market so they can profit. We do not have a free market anymore and we are all victims.
The writer should check with the state BOP monitoring system and make sure that when that pharmacy filled and reversed the hydrocodone RX and not physically filled it, it may not have taken it off the monitoring list and it was still uploaded to the state / But then they physically ran it and filled it the next day. It might show up on the state monitoring system as if he/she got 2 Vicodin scripts filled 2 days in a row at the same pharmacy even though it was only one. I read somewhere that some systems do not remove automatically the reversed prescriptions, the one not filled/reversed has to be manually removed by the pharmacy via a form for a correction. I think this has to happen in Indiana because the RX number would be changed, the date actually filled, etc. And it has to be done by the PIC. If I read and interpreted the INSPECT section correctly and we are supposed to be on 24 hour reporting time now. Feel free to update me if I’m mistaken, I’ve been doing some retail float work for agency everyone uses different systems I’m lucky just to even get to check the INSPECT since I don’t know any of the patients.
Shameless! It still, after all this time, boggles my mind that supposedly professionally trained pharmacists/staff (not so much), will act like a bunch of con artists and liars and then have the nerve to call pain patients overusers, early fillers, junkies, essentially!
ENOUGH!