Terminally ill cancer patients denied prescription drugs at the pharmacy
Pharmacies cite pressure from DEA to crack down on pain killers
watch video on website.. could not embed in this post
“Who in their right mind would not prescribe drugs to somebody who’s terminal?” asks Darlene Patsos.
Two weeks ago, Patsos was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
“Every time I go in there, it’s a different excuse,” she said of the pharmacy.
Doctors told her the cancer is inoperable and will take her life.
“It’s in my bones, probably in my brain. It’s throughout my body,” she said.
To ease her pain, doctors prescribed oxycodone, but pharmacist after pharmacist refused to fill it.
“I get the third degree every time I try to get the drugs,” she said. “I feel like they view me as a drug addict.”
Patsos says she was even told to “pharmacy shop” — go from pharmacy to pharmacy until she finds someone who will fill it. She ultimately did find a pharmacy, but it’s a 40-mile round-trip drive from her home.
For the last week, WESH 2 has been investigating why people with legitimate prescriptions for pain killers are getting denied at the pharmacy.
Special report: Pharmacies denying legitimate prescriptions
We’re now hearing from cancer patients who say they’re routinely being denied doctor-prescribed medication and made to feel like drug addicts.
Cancer patient: Pharmacies look at me like a drug addict
Another woman with stage 4 breast cancer wrote WESH 2, saying, “I took my last prescription to 13 pharmacies over a period of three weeks before I finally found someone who would fill it.”
“It’s a deeply concerning problem where we have legit patients being wrongfully denied of their medications on an increasingly frequent basis,” said Dr. Avi Bhandari.
Bhandari said the prescriptions he prescribes are being denied daily.
“We know as physicians that our patients are not getting the health care outcomes that we desire for them,” he said.
Last week, WESH 2 Investigates spoke with one pharmacist who cited pressure from the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on certain painkillers.
Bhandari said drug stores are following inconsistent policies when it comes to dispensing medication in an effort to determine who needs it and who doesn’t.
“They’re forced to basically determine medical necessity, and there isn’t much clarity or consistency in those checklists,” he said.
According to the Florida Society of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation, at least three people committed suicide last year after being denied pain medicine.
The DEA has agreed to an interview with WESH 2 next week.
Filed under: General Problems
I think these rants against pharmacists and pharmacies are getting a bit much.. The problem is the wholesalers and DEA. The wholesalers tell the pharmacys that your dispensing of controls cannot be at a certain percentage of non controls. If you go over that limit then you get cut off of new orders for that month or get totally shut done. The wholesalers are getting this guidance from dea. So what shall a pharmacists do.. dispense to their regular patient and take new ones In and get cut off or dispense just to regular customers??? your call!!!
The DEA makes public statements that they are not causing this with the wholesalers.. which we all know that it is a lie.. but.. it puts obstacles in the ACLU’s way of suing them for violating the constitution. Suggest that you read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_%28commerce%29 It is against the Sherman Antitrust Act to require a entity to purchase something they don’t want to purchase something that they don’t want.. Isn’t that what the wholesalers are doing.. if you want to buy more than $ of controls… you have to purchase more than $$$ of non-controls. Since the three major wholesalers .. that control 85% of the market and they are all doing the same/similar things.. couldn’t that be considered COLLUSION… ??? How about restriction of interstate trade ?? I think that is covered under RICO law. If you don’t want to file a complaint.. a number of you Pharmacist get together and hire an attorney to file the complaint and hide your identity behind attorney/client privilege. The DEA can sit behind their desks and make mandates, the big shots at McKesson, Amerisource & Cardinal can sit at their desks making mandates, the same for the big shots at the chain pharmacies.. guess who the pts are going to focus their discontent with.. the person that is in their face.. and that would be you.. the Pharmacist telling them … “I’m not comfortable” and they know that their are going to be thrown into withdrawal and you are the MESSENGER …
Unless in the last 8 yrs the 3 letter chain has their own distribution centers (warehouses) which included secured sections for the drugs and a locked area for the narcotics. When I worked for them, ALL of the drugs came from the warehouse, not a wholesaler. So this ‘the wholesaler is cutting my order’ isn’t really flying with me. If this has changed since I last worked for them, someone can correct me on the changes. When I worked for an independent, yes all of our drugs..narcotic and otherwise came from a wholesaler, not a corporate owned warehouse. It’s real easy to tell if the chain is telling the truth….CII must be maintained with a perpetural inventory…all one has to do is look at the books to see the pills on hand, the invoices received and compare to the orders made.
Again, someone with a cancer diagnosis should NEVER EVER be denied pain medication.
[…] Trying doing the pharmacy crawl – stage 4 terminal lung cancer PHARMACIST STEVE […]
Btw, if a response does occur I bet it will be denial. Just like the thousands that they left without a doctor last week. You would think logically that if the DEA was concerned about a practice that they would shadow or place another in the clinic to see the actual patients. Perhaps suffering is more their style. Looking forward to here what the excuse is.
Steve, your post shows you care just as your daily advocacy does. I pray for more like you to join the battle that is being lost between the patients and the government. Most like me are ill, at poverty level with little education and don’t know where to turn. Just your actions prevented one from suffering one moment longer than needed. If that family did not thank you I do and so will God.
I also want to my earlier comment…at one time as a pharmacist who worked with a home hospice, the nurses, the oncologist and I spent alot of time educating family members yes your dying family member will become DEPENDENT on the narcotics and that is quite different from addiction. We DON”T worry about addiction and neither should you. The goal is your family member is comfortable and has a quality of life to enjoy with you with the time left. Times will come where we have to increase the dose and that’s OK, doesnt mean the cancer is getting worse, it’s just tolerance. (You all know the spiel) We went out of our way to make sure our hopsice/cancer patients always had access not matter what to their medications….to hear now that pharmacists are DENYING CANCER PATIENTS medicaitons makes me want to scream!!! I’m just physically ill thinking about some cancer patient out there suffering needlessly….That pharmacist should have his/her license pulled for negligence/malpractice….RANT OVER
I completely understand, I worked at a large LTC pharmacy thru a temp service for some 7 yrs.. when the 2-3 orders came in for end of life pt.. This pharmacy’s system was for the orders to be faxed in.. there was input techs to key in the order and a RPH (me) to verify the orders. As soon as I heard a faxed order was in the que.. I was breathing down the input tech’s neck to push it to the head of the que and key it in… I would put it at the top of my que and approve it.. normal process was to leave approved orders in a print que to be printed out in batches.. but.. I would go into the print que and force out those particular orders.. If they got stuck in billing.. I would release them and print them anyway.. billing adjudication was done 100 miles away … soon as the labels were printed I contacted the head of the delivery/courier .. tell them I had orders end of life orders and I needed a driver NOW OR SOONER.. I would then breathe down the necks of the fill techs until the orders were finalized and bagged.. and I personally handed to the driver/courier. If things were left to “normal processing time” the order would take 1-2 hrs to be processed and out the door.. my time out the door was 15-30 minutes. Normally, I was pretty laid back.. didn’t try to micromanage the staff.. we all worked as a team.. I normally worked the closing shift and on my shift .. we normally got out on time.. we could not leave until all orders were finished… because we worked as a team.. not all of the RPH’s that worked there could say that… the staff knew that those few times when I would say to JUMP ON A ORDER… that it was pushed to the first of the line.. no if’s and’s or but’s.. once the order was out the door.. everything went back to normal.. I got some very positive feed back from some of the nurses at the homes… and set a pretty high standard for the other Pharmacists to live up to or meet.
Barbaric is a understatement. It’s the suffering that people are allowing to happen. It’s scary because it could be you next. I have never committed a crime but can’t get a free attorney that a drug dealer gets. I just want to live my limited life without pain and suffering. Impossible in the USA! WHY?
How could this be allowed to happen in the use to be great nation that boys are being killed to protect our freedoms. To suffer and discriminate to be guilty because of being sick. Yes I am one having problems getting prescriptions filled. But why punish the ones that can’t fight back-because of the loss of compassion for the chronic ill.
This BEYOND to far now…..as someone who worked as a hospice pharmacist…BARBARIC is an understatement to those pharm dieties and chains who are refusing to fill these medications