This showed up as a comment on another of my posts and this could be a major impact on patient health & safety.. if it is true !
My manager just told a story of the DM saying. .. There’s a situation where once you exceed a DEA or manufacturer quota, you will forever have to check PDMP on every control your pharmacy ever fills again, staple the results to the hard copy, etc. Has anyone ever heard anything like this??
Let’s run the numbers… taking a store averaging 30 Rx/hr with a 12 hr day..
Assumption:
1 tech hr/15 rxs = 24 tech hrs/day
20% of total Rxs are controls.. = subtract 5 tech hrs/day – some of the major chains it has been reported that they are removing controlled Rxs from the computation of allowable tech hours – to discourage pharmacists from filling controls ?
Now we have a extra 5 minutes for all the pharmacist time.. in the administrative requirements of Hydrocodone products to C-II.. presuming that 50% of the controls will now be C-II’s.. that is 3 more Pharmacist’s man hours/day for new administrative tasks.
Throw in having to run a PMP report on all controls… estimated times 5 minutes each … another 6 man hours devoted to administrative tasks.
If a pharmacy/Pharmacists fills 360 Rxs/12 hr day.. with no controls … he/she will have 36 man hours (12 Pharmacist/24 techs)
If a pharmacy/Pharmacists fills 360 Rxs/12 hr day with 20% controls… after subtracting lost tech hours and added administrative hours.. there would remain approx 22 man hours.. the Rx dept moves from 10 Rxs/man hour to 16 Rxs/man hour..
And pain pts wonder why the Pharmacist just wants to JUST SAY NO.. to filling your controlled med Rxs ?
Filed under: General Problems
I have never heard of this either. Our PIC does not even know what PDMP is let alone how to use it. But it would not surprise me that we are expected to do this in addition to making adherence calls, giving vaccinations of all kinds, faxing for prior authorizations, and making sure that the pt gets whatever color of generic that “works”. Did I mention that the prescription should be filled correctly in less than 10 minutes? (Folks are willing to wait longer at the car wash!) Our motto should be “we really don’t care about patient care”.