CVS/pharmacy Ready to Help Medicare Part D Patients During Annual Enrollment Period
From the press release:
“CVS pharmacists are available throughout the Annual Enrollment Period to help patients save money by providing them all of their current prescription information required to complete plan comparisons using the online Medicare Plan Finder. While pharmacists cannot recommend any specific Medicare Part D plan, they can help guide patients through the selection process to choose the best plan for their individual needs,” added said Papatya Tankut, RPh, Vice President of Pharmacy Professional Services, CVS/pharmacy.
You got to love the semantics… A pharmacist cannot MAKE A RECOMMENDATION as to which Part D plans a patient should sign up for… BUT .. CVS Pharmacists CAN HELP GUIDE a patient in their selection..
I can hear the conversations now… from a Medicare Senior: ” I am so confused… there are so many choices… it is all very confusing to me ….Which one would you tell your Mother/Father – Grandmother/Grandfather … to sign up for “”? RPH: ” I can’t recommend which one you sign up for.. it is against the law… but I know my Mother/Father – Grandmother/Grandfather – has THIS ONE”… pointing to the CVS based program…
The RPH.. did not recommend a program… just GUIDED THEM BY THE NOSE … to a CVS PROGRAM !
Since this is a PRESS RELEASE … from CVS… it is going to be hard for Mr Tankut.. later claiming that he was misquoted…
I am sure that CVS did not put a metric on how many patients were signed up to their programs per store on the store Pharmacists…
Filed under: General Problems
CVS loves their mail order plan. Point them there and laud mail order. Might be a win win!
You can never understand this from the point of view of a pharmacist. This is something you would can only see if you are at the home office at CVS and you only have a MBA degree. All the ‘boys’ are sitting around ‘brainstorming’. Maybe I should rephrase that ‘brainstorming’, because there is very little brain to go around. They are trying to find ways to get more customers. So, they are trying to think of any kind of gimmick to gets folks in the door. With the ever growing tide of Medicare folks, just getting them in the door is a way to increase business. Since the pharmacist cannot pick a plan for the customer or even remotely direct them to a plan, it is again one of those areas where CVS is skirting with the law. Never mind that the pharmacist is busy with all the corporate crap that CVS has for them to do, the pharmacist is busy filling prescriptions, customer is at the drive-thru, pharmacist does not have enough help and is having to run the cash register, and there is someone there waiting on their flu shot, and another customer is bitching and complaining so they can get a gift card. The pharmacist is totally out of the ‘brainstorming’ sesson at the home office. In fact, I think they have totally forgotten about the pharmacist, because the pharmacist is unimportant anyway. Just dump every thing on the pharmacist. Why not? If they don’t like it, they can always replace them with another one.