My Doctor's Inefficient Staff Is Not Helping My Blood Pressure! :(

G

Guitarist

Senior Member
This is happening every month. He won't renew one med for more than a month at a time, so every month I have to call the clinic and ask them to call in the refill. This morning I called and asked them to renew both prescriptions. Eleven hours later I called the pharmacy to make sure they had received the refill order. They had not.

This happened last month too, and I think the month before that. I called the clinic back and was on hold for TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES before someone finally answered. When I asked if they were all OK as I had been holding for 25 minutes she didn't even apologize, just said "Oh my goodness." I told them I had called this morning and requested the refills but that, 11 hours later, the pharmacy had not received them. She said they had faxed over the request this morning.

So I call the pharmacy back. Nope. No refill order. Oh. Wait. It just came in.

Same thing happened last month.

I love my doctor, and on the rare occasions when I have to go to the clinic, I love his staff. But I HATE the fact that they cannot call in a simple refill order at some point during their 12-hour workday. You would think that somewhere, during 12 hours, they could manage to call/fax/email prescriptions to pharmacies. After all, whenever I'm at the clinic, their waiting room is not exactly packed out.

Grrrrr ........ is this the modern-day norm for doctors' offices? I can't afford to change doctors, pay for an office visit with a new doctor, or expect one of my neighbors to drive me to a more distant clinic. This one is barely 5 minutes from where I live.

Back in the "good" old days our family doctor was a family friend, lived up the street, went to our church, we kids went to school with his kids. True, we had to drive all the way downtown to his office, pay for parking, and wait at least an hour in his waiting room before seeing him, but he gave us written prescriptions, which we picked up at the drugstore on the way home, no waiting, and we also knew the pharmacist.

This is not doing my BP any good at all!
 

My primary MD's office is the same. Never do they get my scripts or orders right. My MD is terrific, listens and is open to my input. Takes time with his patients. All hard to find in this day of insurance restrictions. So do not really want to change. Guess the pro's outweigh the con's.
 

I'm sorry you have to put up with this too but I admit I'm glad I'm not alone in this.

You're right, the pros do outweigh the cons.
 
I feel that it is the path that health care has taken in general. Despite caring professionals....the insurance companies expect them to see x amount of pts a day and only spend something like 15 minutes with them. Medicare and Medicaid reinburse them a very small amount for visits/care. And require a enormous amount of documentation. With all the trash malpractice cases, MD's have to pay for extremely expensive insurance. Plumbers and electricians and other blue collar workers make more than MD's do now.
 
No really you are not alone at all. Same RX's every month, the day meds I have enough and then some. The sleepy stuff and it's like picking teeth. Same dose, same month, why is this so ******* difficult? It's not controlled, idiots...
 
I don't see why the doctor won't prescribe for more than one month at a time.

BUT, maybe it's not the doc, but the pharmacy. With my sister's blood pressure meds we had the same problem EVERY SINGLE MONTH. Round and round with the doc's staff and the Wal-Mart pharmacy. Then, I suggested she change to Walgreens because it is so much easier to get to, and since she changed to Walgreens, no problems at all.
 
Some pharmacies will call the MD's office for a refill and some will not. They leave it up to us. Perhaps Walgreens does?
Also, when really scrutinizing medicare bills once I discovered that MDs charge for writing prescriptions. So when you visit it is not included in your visit. Rather an extra charge.
have not thought to look to see if they charge Medicare for call in refills.
A friend has to now physically go into the office to get her sleeping pill script monthly. Not for a visit, only to get her prescription. Maybe the ruling for non-controlled sleeping meds have changed? Because of the dependency problems with them?
 
Working in healthcare forever, I see both sides. First off, why are being forced to play this game every month? Unless it's a controlled substance, etc., 3 months worth of meds are the norm, with lots of other exceptions. Ask your doc why. For me, the docs had to sign off on the approval of refills. My doc hated doing refills so he'd approve them for as long as reasonable, like a year, 6 months, one month. There'd be a pile in my docs office with the staff waiting for him to do his thing so the meds could be called/faxed, etc in. Pharmacies have a tendency to blame the office staff when in turn the pharmacy themselves are not doing their job (Walmart was the worse). The standard is a 24 hour period when you request a refill. Waiting on hold for 25 minutes? Unacceptable! I'd be calling the clinic administrator asking why.
 
I have a scrip that I take every day and my doc gives me a year's worth of refills when I go in for my annual checkup.

My sister takes a drug that requires monthly monitoring levels, so she has to have a blood test every month, so I see why her doc doesn't give year a year's worth (because she wouldn't go in for the checks if she wasn't forced to).

But if the medication doesn't take monitoring, why in the world doesn't the doc just give you more refills?
 
When my doctor's office calls in the prescription, it's good for a year--4 refills, each 90 days worth. I use Smith's Foods (Kroger) pharmacy. They call or text me when my refill is ready to pick up. Once a year I need to see the doctor for a new prescription. I remember in the past, KMart pharmacy could only fill 30 days at a time. I have no idea why it would be different, but seems to be. PS none of mine are painkillers or opiates.
 

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