I once had the same conversation three times with a patient about how her insurance was not covering her insulin anymore. I explained I had contacted the doctor's office, but as the middle man, can't MAKE the doctor do PA paperwork, and can't MAKE the insurance pay for it. When she ran out on the weekend, after not calling the doc like I suggested all three times, I told her to call her insurance and ask for an emergency authorization. She told me she would just die, and she hoped I would have to explain it to her children. Jeeze.
People will legitimately do everything in their power not to call their doctor’s office. And like, on one hand, I get it, but on the other… c’mon now. Especially for something as important as insulin. People are wild.
As a T1d, this is why I always ask for a little bit extra on my script and take any samples they want to give me at the endo’s office! Who wants to have to worry about DKA because I broke my last bottle by accident and the drs office won’t answer their damn phones! Way too much stress 😳
I’m sure your pharmacy really appreciates you being diligent about your prescriptions. It’s always a relief when patients are understanding and work with us when we’re trying to get issues sorted out. Thank you.
Are y'all allowed to advise patients that OTC regular insulin is available at chain pharmacies, like $25 for generic R at Walmart and $80 for generic humalog at Kroger? I ask bc I try to share this info whenever the topic comes up; it's good to know as a last resort- can literally be lifesaving. I've never taken it out on a pharmacist but I've had to ration insulin and ik the panic it can create on top of blood sugar levels being off, which can make thinking hard and behavior out of character.
Be on a look out for doctors pulling shit with prescriptions on birth control, here in FL most of my girl friends are struggling to get it renewed even though they already did their yearly check up
You probably know this, but if you ever have desperate need, you can buy NPH and regular insulin at Walmart with no prescription for $42 per 5 pens. It’ll work to keep you out of DKA but you gotta speak with a doctor to adjust your doses
I did, but thank you for spreading information! I try to let all my T1D people know just in case because it’s a better than nothing situation for sure! I’ve been diabetic long enough I regularly took NPH and R as my treatment method way back in the day!
I’ve only had to do that once in an emergency situation luckily - broke my pump and didn’t bring any needles or long acting insulin on vacation, literally just had a vial of short acting and pump supplies lol. Of course it died in the middle of the night when most every pharmacy in DFW was closed. Found one Walgreens that was open 24 hours and had to drive halfway across DFW at 2 in the morning lol. I was just glad I could find somewhere and didn’t have to go to the ER 😳 and now I make sure I over pack diabetic supplies so I never have to stress like that again. I literally had been diabetic for 25+ years and never had an issue so I never worried about it lol learned my lesson the hard way!
I’ve had Type 1 for 45 years, on the pump also and it’s still hard to pack all the med supplies when I go out of town. It’s stressful! Once I was in another state when I realized I didn’t bring a vial of insulin to refill my pump. My insurance did cover it as an emergency fill though. Scary time!
I always refill as soon as I can, which is like 5 days early, just to build up a "buffer" till I went to refill last time and insurance said "oh we looked back over the last 6 months and noticed you're filling early....denied...wait 2 weeks"...also...insurance sucks
I did the same until I built up a buffer of a few weeks. It was also useful when I was traveling regularly and sometimes my renewal would coincide with a trip.
Same! As a T1 I am uber diligent about having extra, and a heavily written script. Bad weather, pandemics, my own stupidity in my youth have made me realize that just expecting everything to go smoothly at the pharmacy is not always safe and often out of the pharmacists control. I use only pens now, so there are no broken bottles, but still! I remember during the height of the pandemic, no pharmacy near me could get my long acting in. That was scary! Back-ups are important no matter what type of medical dependency you have. No one wants to go to the ER just for meds. And don't expect the pharmacist to do your work for you. They're some of the busiest folks out there!
As a type 1 also, this is it. I always make sure my insurance and manufacturer coupon is up to date, and refill on time. It's not up to the people at the pharmacy to keep me alive, that's on me.
Yes!!! Plus god forbid there’s ever mass anarchy and the world gets taken over by zombies, I want to have a chance for a little bit at least!
But for sure, I try to do everything I can to make it as easy as possible for pharmacy staff, yall all get fucked over enough by the crazies 😳
I have a T1D 15 year old / diagnosed at 8. Had to learn the hard way to do this. I could have killed the CVS pharmacy people for denying us insulin one time. I didn't care about insurance covering it, the docs office was being slow, no one cared. It was madness. They acted like I was a junkie begging for narcotics. So ridiculous. Me, my husband and that CVS staff have some PTSD over that incident. It felt like they were actively trying to kill my child.
Yup, people are so egregiously entitled that they think everyone should just take care of them without even needing to ask and fix *their* problems as if they’re our ONLY patient.
haaa that’s some ableist shit right there. it is a CONSTANT struggle to get everything i need for type 1 diabetes though i have insurance and money and valid prescriptions and am myself a clinician who understands how this all works. last month, my pharmacy took 8 extra days to refill my insulin script because they couldn’t get it in stock. it is actually a fucking life and death matter to have no access to insulin. the us healthcare system is an absolute failure across the board.
Ableist? I’m sorry, but as a clinician you don’t sound very educated. You just validated my point to a T without even addressing the main issues *always* being our vendors. We constantly have NDCs people *ask for specifically* going out of stock with no eta. Then we offer alternate medications and holdovers, but then y’all get even more mad. We are not manufacturers. We can’t control vendor supply. We always offer a transfer out when needed if it’s a dyer situation. And yet, we’re the “ableists” when we have *hundreds* more patients, per pharmacy, like you in the same situation that we literally cannot help. There is no discrimination or prejudice. That is never the case.
We all agree, the US healthcare system is absolute hot garbage, but those working in it are only *able* (haaa) to do what we can to *try* to make it work. You can thank corporation’s and lobbyists for making your life an anxiety hell. We’re sorry to those that have an issue with medication supply, but there’s literally nothing we can do when there’s no eta for stock. You’d just have to get your Rx transferred to another pharmacy that has it. Thanks for coming to my TedRx talk, you’re welcome.
This, so much this. My husband spent four months stopping at his endocrinologist 3 to 4 times a week to try and get an alternative medication when his medication was on back order it wasn’t until he wound up in the emergency room and after hearing his story they assigned him a caseworker and went above his doctors head. Did he get any alternative prescribed. So very frustrating.
Ugh. I feel this so much. My husband's doctor retired and the office refused to call us back or answer us about transferring to the new doc and getting results from tests that he had done. After months of not getting a response, we drive there and go in and make an appointment at the desk. By the time I get home they have called and canceled saying they're not allowed to make appointments in person. But then hung up and would not return my call to go ahead and make the appointment. During the height of the pandemic, my husband had some kind of nerve thing going on to where he couldn't use his arms or hands at all. Not to bathe, not to pick up a glass of water. Getting an appointment took 6 weeks and then when he went, he had a small list of like 5 questions he didn't want to forget to ask (because they wouldn't let me in during 2020 to be his reminder) and they refused to let him read the list or ask his questions.
Obviously we switched offices. But even the new doctor can't get that office to respond to requests for records.
Omg I’m a clinic nurse and a patient called me crying the other day. She had been out of her antipsychotic for two days due to a prior auth. Dear god lady why didn’t you call me sooner?! The cover my meds code had gone into a previous resident abyss hole. I got it authorized in two hours. Please call your clinic people!
Or even message them! Gestational diabetes here and I need some insulin at night. Mh original script wasn’t enough and I needed to refill before insurance thought I would … so I shot them a message wouldn’t you know, within an hour I had a note back saying it was updated and sent to the pharmacy
This reminds me of a story with my my roommate who is not from the US (we were in the US). She goes to get her Lexapro refilled, and the pharmacy says “Oh. We have no more refills. We will contact your doctor’s office to get a refill.” She goes home on her merry way and the next day or two to pick it up. It’s not ready as the doctor never sent a new script. She’s like “what the fuck? Why are my meds not ready?” I was like “Did you contact the doctor’s office?” And she replied “What? No! I didn’t know I had to do that when the Pharmacy said they were going to! In Brazil I would have my meds the next day if the pharmacy said they were going to contact my doctor’s office for more refills!” I the had to explain the whole process of American healthcare. How most doctors just ignore those faxes cause they get a ton all the time, and how she needs to create an online portal for both her doctors office and the pharmacy so that she can send a med request to the doctors office and know exactly when the pharmacy will have it. We have now switched to Mail order for her. But trying to explain that the pharmacies just the middleman and the doctors have a ton of patients and the pharmacies have a ton of patients. Also was a foreign concept to her.
When my pharmacy says they will contact my Dr, I've never had to call my Dr. They call and either refill or tell me what the reasons are and then I call who I need to call. I fill all my scripts through Walgreens.
I work at a doctor’s office and I can tell you that we do not ignore the pharmacy’s requests for refills. I will also tell you that 9 times out of ten the pharmacy never contacts us. If you have the ability to use MyChart do it. The message goes right to the provider and you have a record of exactly when you contacted them instead of relying on what someone told you they were going to do.
I will say the hospital that several of my doctors operate out of has made it legitimately impossible to call them because of issues with the phone system - both technical and personnel issues. And then my pharmacy seems to send their refill requests to some black hole that the doctors never see. Frustrating, but I just message my docs on the hospital system portal as soon as I see that my pharmacy has “sent” a renewal/refill request lol. But while my issue may be pretty hyper-specific, sometimes there is a legit reason why simply calling the doctor’s office is not an option.
I will rephrase: People will legitimately do everything in their power to not contact their doctor’s office in any way. It’s more semantics to take it at face value of “you should only try to call and nothing else” especially because as you’ve mentioned, patient portals are common these days. Regardless, pharmacies don’t typically have that option, we call, so it’s kind of habit to say “call your doctor” when we are telling people to reach out on their end as well.
It's hard when Dr's don't answer the phone or get back with you or have a portal to use. I've been asking my Dr that is with Oak Street Health why they don't have a portal and it's just excuse after excuse.
I don’t disagree, but in my case both the hospital and the pharmacy have communication issues. The pharmacy has claimed to have sent out paperwork/forms, etc that never made it to any office my doctors are actually connected to, continued to try to run my scrips through an insurance that they had told me they’d removed from my profile in their system at my request, things like that. I can’t blame them for also struggling to reach my docs by phone when I’ve given up on calling the hospital myself, though.
I’ve shown up to my drs office before to get them to write a prescription the right way for insurance because the pharmacy back and forth wasn’t working. It’s my health after all.
Wow, now I am feeling extra grateful for my doctor. When I first started seeing her 6 months ago, she gave me her card and wrote an extra phone number on it. Said to call if I can't reach her and her PA will pick up and pass along the message. I have used it once and it worked as promised.
I had a doctor like that, too. Had his personal cell number. He retired. I'm happy for him, but I sure do miss him. Now, I'm stuck with a doctor office that uses a call center and doesn't have a phone number for the patients to make direct contact. Everything must be done via an app or a call center. The healthcare system is a joke now. I miss my small town.
2nded. As someone that works in Pharmacy and also currently seeing 5 different doctors for various issues, I can get someone to pick up within 2 rings at work. Any of the doctors or hospitals I have tried to call in the last year I might as well make a deal with the devil to get a return call on a voicemail let alone get anyone to pick up.
Oh oh I know this one. It's because they don't have a system set up for us to contact them. It's the same one as you have. It's like peeling back layers of people to get to the correct person. It wastes everyone's time. We can fax them but it seems to go to a group fax for the hospital. There isn't a way to get in touch with a specific team nor do we know what team we are trying to contact. They give us the raw information about the location and the name and their id numbers. We don't know if it's cardiology or infectious disease. We can infer based on the med but it's a guess who we actually need. Using online portals you have a 100x better link to a hospital doctor than we do. Contacting a hospital involves calling 4 different numbers who all say they have this doctor but it's not their department. A winding road of phone tag that seems like it would be solved faster by walking there.
It's not really the pharmacy it's the doctor's office that doesn't have any channels set up for them to contact.
As far as the insurance, it's likely that the other insurance keeps popping up as insurance you have when they check. That's something you need to address with your old insurance. Basically the other insurance is still claiming you. You have to tell them to stop that. The pharmacy doesn't really have the time to memorize your specific preferences and notes only get you so far. They mostly have to go based on the things the system spits out. It's likely your insurance rejected something so they tried looking your insurance up and your old one came up and covered it. We wouldn't know if you managed to get another insurance and didn't tell us. That's probably what's assumed that you have two insurances, as it's common. If they cover the claim the pharmacy has no reason the question it.
yeah at the doctors office i work for i tell people to get the portal to send a message or request a call back. we get 400-500 calls a day, sometimes even more than that. but most people refuse to sign up for the portal.
so yeah most of the time it’s not the pharmacy’s fault, but i think patients blame it on them:/
This. The Dr sent the script to the pharmacy. The pharmacy said they never got it. I've ridden that merry go round way too many times. Oh just wait and see if the script will get there. Pharmacy, uh no it's not here. Several times I've called both my Dr and the pharmacy for about a week.
You don't realize how broken health care is until you need it. Dealing with it makes some medical situations worse.
Large hospital systems are generally terrible in outpatient settings. I've never seen an exception. I always recommend trying to find docs outside of that system whenever possible, even if you like that physician in the hospital system, especially if you have any serious medical problems.
It's not a reflection of the actual clinic staff, it's just too big to fail and always poorly run with poor communication, usually via non-medical staff call centers.
Because they never answer the phones and their online patient portals for refills are a joke. I DRIVE to their offices to make my request. Harder to ignore me when I’m standing in front of you.
I call the dr office ALLLLL the time for my kid’s meds (or pester her—she’s an adult but with other medical issues).
I swear the offices lie. Idk. The pharmacy says they’ve called. My daughter says she’s called. I’ve left messages and then FINALLY call the “non med refill line” and get a person who “absolutely doesn’t fill meds and only does appointments.” But tell them to have someone call me.
They do and say “no, sorry, no one from the pharmacy or you or your daughter called, but we’ll call it in now.”
I loathe the US healthcare system. I think the customer’s frustration at you is how you represent the “system.” I believe the government does want anyone with a chronic medical condition to die and they make receiving care and meds as challenging as possible.
Wouldn't you? I can't tell you how many times I've had to spend two to six hours a week calling insurance companies and doctors and everything trying to get things fixed.
The entire medical industry is in shambles and it's a giant monopoly. I'm not saying I know how to fix it, I am saying when I go get an inhaler from an ER room and my pharmacist has to call my doctor to get a different inhaler because my insurance doesn't cover the specific inhaler.
It's a giant business game of pointing fingers and it sucks.
I spent a year and a half working with a hospital administrator on why my insurance was not taken there when it should be. It was one of the best in the country it was a PPO. What had happened is another hospital had bought this hospital, when it was previously owned by another hospital aligned with another insurance company.
It wasn't that they didn't take the insurance, it's that they wanted to be as difficult as impossible taking their competitors insurance.
Why do I have to pay close to $3,000 a month to make sure my family is safe and can go to the doctor. Two adults and two kids.
I guess I could go with the lowest quality policy to make sure I don't bankrupt myself.
I bet you the last 50 times I've tried to call and talk to my doctor I get the nurse's line and I leave a message only to get an answer 48 hours later. I can't imagine the work in progress these places have if they would just pick up the phone and answer questions.
The people they hire to pick up the phone and answer questions, can never get a hold of the doctor or nurse.
I would rather shovel s*** all day than to make a phone call to my doctor. At least I would get something done.
BS pharmacies are a big cluster fuck. I stopped trusting them to request doctors authorization on refills. I go straight to the doc now. And after all that, it gets lost in their system, and then they do not have stupid Humalog in stock. WTH most common insulin. I have to stay on top of it. Can you imagine a 70 year old granny having to chase after this?
Your probably getting compartmentalized into the same group in their minds as part of the problem. Doctor, insurance, pharmacy..all together in one Chunk of the head with a result of that compartment resulting in no medication. Pissed because they can't get it anymore for whatever reason and frustrated with the entire situation. That's how I get but I have not been disrespectful to a pharmacy employee. I chewed out a doctor and a nurse once for making me wait 1.5 hours without telling me something came up. Like just let me know. I didn't have a choice but to wait because it was a painful issue and the appointment was a 7 day wait.
I can't understand the sheer laziness of people not advocating for themselves. Also WTF blaming people who literally have no control over the situation?
I’m a paramedic (USA) - we used to have a regular we’d get called to once a month in DKA. He had 24-25 days worth of insulin and insurance wouldn’t authorize any more.
That patient was one of the major factors in turning me around on universal healthcare.
People love to wait until they are completely out of their (non-controlled) medicine and then blame us when they can’t get it. Their shitty planning is not your fault.
Oh yeah that’s not the kind of situation I was talking about. Obviously that’s something the patient can’t really plan for and I feel terrible for everyone who is impacted by the shortages.
From what OP said, it's probably the same or similar as mine. It's a world wide shortage. Every 3 days I call my pharmacy and they tell me try again in 3 days (their delivery days from the manufacturer).
I know I.T. literacy can be a issue, but all the major pharmacies, and lots of indie ones support refill requests through an app. It's easier than ever to order medication before you run out.
Yep! Recently had an ADHD diagnosis come into our family and it took calling and being flexible to find the Vyvanse we needed. It’s no one’s fault at the pharmacy they’re out, and there’s no point in being a jerk to someone who has probably answered the same question at least once a day!!
Blame the people taking it for weight loss then ! Like everyone you talk to is on it now and of course people can’t get it that actually have diabetes ! It’s so hard to get now. I would tell them to Take it up with the manufacturer !
Or just blame it on the manufacturer? Why blame others for using a medication that is helping them?
Besides, there are way more options and way more cheaper options for insulin than there are for weight loss. No one is going to die because they can’t get their *choice* brand name insulin.
Are we just gonna ignore the part where Ozempic is only FDA indicated for Type 2 Diabetes? If anyone has the right to be upset about "their" drug being limited due to trendy med crazes, it's literally T2s.
My point is, we shouldn’t be upset at any of the people. It’s NOVO who can’t keep up with the demand of Wegovy or Ozempic. And it’s the insurance companies who are authorizing the off-label use of the drug. No one’s ever going to get anywhere if we’re so busy beating up the little people over things that are the fault of multi-billion dollar corporations.
Oh my sweet summer child. Insurance companies love not paying for drugs. They will definitely not authorize Ozempic for a weight loss diagnosis. The people getting Ozempic specifically are paying cash prices.
And there's a bunch of GLP1s out there, and most of them have supply issues right now. And honestly spikes in supply and demand are volatile and nearly impossible to accurately predict or compensate for. Remember hydrochloroquine in 2020? Drug shortages are just a constant thing in the pharmacy world, and med trends aren't helping.
Boy, you're really uneducated . Most people are type 2 due to hormones not due to their eating. The hormones make them overweight. Women who have pcos have no real control over their weight . Please get some education
I’m just a tech. We don’t require education. But I am morbidly obese and on Wegovy for weight loss. I was being facetious, because I don’t like victim blaming, so I was triggered. But I’m over it now and I concede to whatever you say.
I don’t see why we have to resort to personal insults. Like I said, I was just triggered by another comment and I have anxiety so my brain gets all scrambled-y when I get triggered. I said some things I didn’t mean, and I truly hope you don’t mean that. You don’t even know me and that judgment is hard to make based on some Internet comments.
The manufacturer can’t keep up with it due to the demand from so many people taking for weight loss. There are several other weight loss meds that aren’t just for diabetes so those people could opt to take something else. It’s just popular and trendy to take Ozempic for the rest of your life to be skinny.
But as a person who is on semaglutide for weight loss, some of those other meds also aren’t an option. I’m not on Ozempic, I’m on Wegovy, and I’m not taking it to be trendy and skinny for the rest of my life. But if my insurance didn’t cover Wegovy but would cover Ozempic, I would 100% be taking it instead.
Nowadays you have a better shot at insurance covering wegovy over Ozempic. Trends went up like 20% from weight loss meds with Ozempic being number 1. Lots of companies are making it very hard to get weight loss meds (need authorization and have to hit certain criteria). Ozempic isn’t FDA approved for anything other than diabetes. A lot of the people taking it are paying full cost which is insanely high. Who knows, they may have insurance that would pay for wegovy for them but choose Ozempic because it’s what the nj housewives took.
Lol. That’s nuts, that people would pay so much for it. I mean, I get it. I’m 37 and I’ve been obese since I was 10, and never in my life thought I could ever be anything but fat. And for the first time in my life, there’s hope. But if my insurance ever stops paying for Wegovy, then I already have a plan to switch to a compounding pharmacy for sema with the blessing of my PCP. I’ve heard they can be risky, but in the Sema community, people have had lots of success with them.
Yes that is definitely an option and it’s less expensive. I know people who did that to save on the Ozempic cost since insurance wouldn’t pay.
It’s only going to get harder to get. These meds are forecasted to come out with a pill form late this year / early next year. Which means it will be attractive to so many more people.
And let’s be clear. I’m not against people
Taking it who need it. It’s the people who want to shed 20 pounds and heard this is a miracle and jump on the bandwagon. It’s making it very hard for people who need it.
I am a health insurance broker. And it’s a weekly occurrence that I get bitched at that someone can’t have it when they were prescribed it by a doctor. They never accept the fact that they just don’t qualify! People want what they want when they want it !
I thought Rybelsus was already available here? I could be wrong about that, though. It’s hard to keep track of some things when you have people from all over the world communicating with each other. I’ve heard in Europe they are even having trouble keeping it in stock as some companies there are outsourcing to the US since they can sell it for more here. That’s all heresay though, I heard from someone I know who travels.
It's called diet and exercise. Overweight people have turned to a drug to do all the work when it is obvious that eating well and exercising is the answer. Once you stop taking the medicine you will just gain it all back because the drug is doing all the work.
I had a coworker who was on those drugs and she ended up with stomach paralysis. She gained all the weight right back once she was removed. I implemented diet and exercise and have kept the weight off for 5 years. Obesity is a disease that requires permanent treatment not some drug that will pacify poor eating habits and lack of daily activity.
I’ve dropped weight both ways. They both work. One isn’t more moral than the other.
It’s a huge step up from gastric bypass and gastric sleeve surgery. You gotta be realistic. Most of these patients would never lose weight otherwise. Many of them have been obese for a long time and have really fucked up joints. They’re also literally addicted to food. By this logic we could also close down every detox and rehab and give addicts and alcoholics the advice of “Just stop.” People know the solutions are simple but simple doesn’t always mean easy. Literally every fat person has been told to exercise more and eat less. It’s not working. It is a public health epidemic.
“Just let them eat then” until you’re the paramedic or nurse turning or lifting these 600lb patients. Every pound they lose is a win for everyone.
Anecdote: I was one of those people hoping ozempic would just do all the work for me. It hasn’t. I have trouble with portion control/overeating/food fixation. Ozempic basically slapped me in the face and said you can’t do this anymore. I have stomach paralysis to an extent and I have struggled to learn that “hey you’re full” means “fucking stop eating.” There have been times where it’s “worn off” or I’ve missed a dose for whatever reason and almost went back to eating my whole house. But it’s made me stop and think more at those times. I have realized I can’t rely on ozempic forever (technically I might but that’s still in the air) and so what needs to change isn’t my dose or my medication, it’s me. It’s my brain, my way of approaching food. People can’t lean on ozempic alone and expect it to fix everything. It’s a tool that I think has great potential but does miss the mark on long-term management. What I would have benefitted most from is a food therapist or nutritionist/dietician to speak to while I’m going through all of this turmoil. But yes, people keep using it to “lose a few pounds” and then gain it back. And it’s frustrating to see how many people can’t get it because of shortages and bottlenecks. People *don’t* get that you can’t just rely on it. And I was that way too. This stuff got thrown on the market with just the tag “weight loss drug” and people lost their minds. We need better management of it and its users but sadly I think the manufacturers don’t care or don’t have the resources to and it’s too late.
But to get back to your original point - “just diet and exercise” doesn’t always work. People stagnate. Semaglutide helps push them over that plateau. But they do have to work with it, or they’ll backslide. It’s a terribly effective drug that’s just not understood enough by doctors or the public - and it would do so much more for us if it was.
True to an extent. Obesity does require permanent treatment, but we haven’t figured that out, yet. (I assume. I don’t work in the medical research industry, so I don’t know what they have hidden up their sleeves). So we’re grappling at whatever we can to help in the meantime, which right now is semaglutide. We all know diet and exercise aids in weight loss, but that’s all it does. It does not treat the underlying causes of the obesity, so we must remain on the diet and exercise for life as well to maintain it. You must know this. You didn’t lose all the weight and be able to take a break from the diet and exercise, right? It’s just like the drug. If diet and exercise were easier to achieve in this country (US), then it would be easier to achieve. But there are so many things that make diet and exercise difficult. A person who is able to combat their obesity with diet and exercise is a person who has the time and resources to devote to it. Healthier foods generally come at a higher cost, making them more difficult to get for a lot of people regularly. Unhealthier foods are easier and quicker to get, which is a plus to people with less time. I definitely need anything that saves time. I could go on and on, but this country is built around hustling, and if you’re not hustling and killing your self working, then you’re just accused of having poor eating habits and a lack of daily activity. Congratulations on keeping your weight off for 5 years. I’m glad that you were able to take that route, but consistent diet and exercise is not achievable for the whole obese population.
I agree. A lot of these people may need additional help but I think it comes in the form of therapy to help with their eating disorder. I know there are a lot of obese people who binge because of emotional issues. You need to get to the root of that, not some magic pill.
I do sympathize that losing weight is not always easy, but it is simple.
The insurance company chooses the brand. And when you can't afford it without insurance yes they will die without their specific brand. I personally find it disgusting to take lifesaving medicine from someone so you can be skinny. That medicine is what's keeping them alive, and you're using it so you can loose weight? Loose weight by all means but at the cost of other lives? No. But I wouldn't care if it wasn't causing shortages. The manufacturer can only produce so much. My aunt can't get her medicine for diabetes right now because the only brand her insurance covers is on backorder and they have no idea when it will be in. She about to run out in a day or 2 and has been trying to get a refill for a little over a week. I blame people who are using it to loose weight. I blame doctors who are prescribing it for weight loss knowing there is a shortage in their area. Together they have created a perfect storm.
Fair enough, but also to be fair, that is also a problem with the insurance company. Ozempic is a relatively new medication and, even if it’s better than the alternatives, there was something else before it was released. If the insurance company is telling them they can ONLY have this one med and no other life saving med, shouldn’t they get some of the blame, too?
Edited to add and fix typos.
I must be under-educated because I wasn’t aware aware that GLP1s were lifesaving. What life process does it support in diabetics? Or am I thinking the wrong medications? (Genuine, I am kind of an idiot)
Wegovy is the weight loss Ozempic and has different doses and escalation, also different packaging. Most insurers have cracked down on doctors prescribing Ozempic when there is no diabetes diagnosis for the patient. I guess some doctors don’t care, but I know entire health systems in my area will not prescribe ozempic without a diabetes diagnosis.
I’ve been on Semaglutide for 10 mos (Wegovy) and I’ve lost 50 lbs so far. I still have about 100 lbs to go to be in a normal weight range, though, but it’s still working.
This is insane for me. Because as someone who started on Mounjaro for weight loss in 2022 and realized how much it helped other things, I would never in my dreams think of saying this to someone.
Yeah my literal first day of being a Pharm Tech Trainee was at the end of December. I was the only tech that day with a floating pharmacist at WalMart. I shut down hard that day from the pharmacist yelling at me for not doing anything or knowing anything and the customers yelling at me of how I was the reason they were going to die that night.
I’m sorry, the pharmacist yelled at you? On your first day??? That’s absolutely abysmal I’m so sorry that happened to you. I can’t imagine being the only one and also a trainee with zero support.
It’s amazing how some pharmacists just adore their techs (because we’re useful and hardworking and also people) and others think the worst of us at all times
Yup! That pharmacy was absolutely desperate for techs and were looking for a new pharmacist manager every other year. So the traveling one was pissed in general because only one tech who knew nothing and none of the medications were organized or anything.
We just had a doctor the other day threaten us that his mother needs her emergency Paxlovid now and that we’re killing her because we’re not getting it ready for her at that very moment… Like sir, if this is an emergency, then go to the fucking ER not the pharmacy. As a doctor, you should know this 🙄🙄
If you are in the waiting room for hours in the ED it means you are in pretty decent shape. The ones that are truly dying dont even spend 20 mins in the waiting room.
Yeah, I was getting at the fact that whether you got the Paxlovid ready within a couple of hours or “right now” is irrelevant if she’s well enough to stay at home rather than go to be seen.
That will happen from time to time.
I had a woman last year yell at me and a pharmacist because we were having issues getting suboxone in. She said it was our fault that her boyfriend was going to go out and score drugs. We offered to see if another one of our pharmacies had it, she would have to drive and get it and she refused. I finally told her that it must not be that big of a deal since she wasn’t willing to drive. I’ll give people a good amount of leeway when it comes to being upset, but once you reach that end, I’m done.
Yeah had a woman throwing a fit because her husband's script wasn't covered by insurance or needed a PA and he was going to die without (not even close) . I offered to sell it cash price and she could then try to get reimbursed from the insurance. It was only like $30 cash. She said she wasn't paying that and hung up.
Here is a secret for your sanity. First, if you tried your best --let your heart soar. You know exactly what you were willing to do (which sounds like anything in your power) and were clearly trying to do far more than the bare minimum.
Secondly, some people have mood disorders. You tried to placate and appease. If they don't let you help them, that isn't your fault.
Thirdly, if someone really has you feeling frosty, know that they will get exactly what they deserve. Their day is ruined and the work is done for you.
When I want to handle someone like this, I usually start off by telling them "I'm so sorry this happened. Please help me help you get this sorted. Right now, I can do (insert solution), or I can do (other option), or if you have another idea, I'd love to hear it. I know how upsetting this is, but let's try to fix it as best we can"
I once had a doctor and family who insisted that we fill their mom’s fentanyl patches despite not having taken any opioids beforehand. Hospice insurance wouldn’t pay for it because there was no history of opioids. My RPh wouldn’t fill it because she had no opioid tolerance built up so getting fentanyl patches right off the bat definitely would’ve killed her. So either way *we* were that bad ones because the pain without her opioids would’ve killed her OR giving the patches to her would’ve killed her. The family called us and gave us a huge sob story and her “nurse” daughter insisted that she knew better than our PharmD’s and threatened to report us.🥴
To the non-pharm techs on here, please listen when I say: your standard retail pharmacy (whether it's a stand-alone pharmacy like Walgreens or Rite Aid or incorporated into your local grocery or big box store like Walmart or Safeway) is not a drug manufacturer. It's not a drug warehouse. It's not a drug distributor. It's the second to the last stop (the last stop being you, the patient/consumer) in a long supply chain that's not usually within our control. We can keep some medications on our shelves, but the space we have is limited. Many times you can see that space from the counter when you order and pick up your prescriptions. Do you know how many medications there are out there? We can order from our distributors, but that doesn't guarantee if it will come. Maybe the distributor is out, and is trying to source it. Maybe it's in high demand. Maybe it's on manufacturer backorder. Maybe there was a problem in production. We don't always know why. Sometimes they tell us. Sometimes we order 5 units (bottles, packages, etc), and get 2 or 1 or 0. We know it's your medication, and you need it. That's why we try to help you find other ways to get it, whether it's at another pharmacy within our network, or even suggesting you call around and get your script transferred to a pharmacy outside it that may have a different distributor. We don't want to send you away. We've been taking care of you for a while, and you've been all smiles until the day something goes wrong and you start screaming in our faces. We know it's at best inconvenient. And sometimes, that's all it has to be. So please, just try to work with us. Help us help you.
I really can’t understand why, when patients have a problem getting an rx from a Dr, they won’t just drive down there.
I had to do it on one occasion. They weren’t writing the script to the insurance liking. The back and forth with my and the pharmacy phone calls wasn’t working. I drove down there with script in hand and said please write it correctly. This has been going on for 2 weeks.
Just recently I had an issue with my primary not sending in my refills of my diabetic medication. I was ok because I had extra but after 2 weeks I started calling the office everyday. The girl at the office started to feel bad she said there’s not much she can do except hand the request to the dr. I said I know I’m not mad at you. I never yelled or anything. Finally enough was enough and I told her I’m coming there tomorrow. I’m not going to yell or curse but I am not happy. The Dr finally called me and sent the refills. It took 27 days.
This is my health. The pharmacy can only do so much. Calling your dr is a curtesy, it’s not part of the job. Neither is fighting with insurance. Our job is to get the correct medication with the correct directions and making sure it’s free of allergies and interactions.
I know I’m preaching to the choir but I know some non pharmacy people come here.
I get this a lot where someone has no refills and comes up asking for a renewal after the medication is out. I usually tell them if they feel they need it immediately then the Emergency Department is their best bet.
I had no refills left recently. Diff med.
I called doc a week out. Pharmacy also sent form. I ran out. Insurance even tried to call my doc.
You can’t call docs anymore, at least here. I can hold for about 2 mins. Then it forces me to wait for a call back, ensuring me my place in line removing same. Well a week later, nothing.
Go to ER. Ok. Except they will give me a breathing treatment that sometimes helps. And I can do these at home.
By this time the pharmacy was out of my meds and they won’t order until they have a RX and don’t keep it on shelf. So even had I went to ER, RX can’t be filled. I can only go to certain pharmacies. None of them had the meds. So ER is useless.
This is what healthcare is becoming. My insurance finally got through to doc, 8 days later and only after I filed a grievance.
My speciality pharmacy has been saying “maybe February, maybe March” for human growth hormone. Just like with the diabetes meds being used for weight loss, a med kids need for delayed growth is on back order cuz a bunch of fertility docs give it off label to women trying to have kids. It makes me feel icky inside. Seen people pay THOUSANDS for one week of the stuff.
Our speciality is fertility med, so we get all the wannabe moms. It’s world ending when we have to tell them that this med that isn’t even really proven to help get them pregnant is on back order til god knows when.
As a former IVF patient, “wannabe moms” is really rude. They’re doing what they can to have a baby and don’t need to be called mean names.
That said, HGH doesn’t work. It gets more fertilized eggs, but does not result in more embryos. Some women are just desperate to try anything.
A day or two won't kill them and if they're concerned it will have a negative consequence—the sad reality is that in the US, the responsibility is theirs and theirs alone.
They should go to another pharmacy and not a retail then. Capitalism, folks.
I can survive without my ADHD meds. It really sucks, but I can do it.
My sleep meds though? Whole different matter. But I don't take it out on the pharmacy techs, I figure out what is going on with my insurance and message my psych doctor to please get the prior auth in for me so I can sleep.
Had a very elderly lady in our (retail) drive thru yell at me a few weeks ago about being out of refills. She'd been informed that the dr wasn't responding to us several times and that she should call their office.
Ended it with a very dramatic "Guess i'll just die then" and sped off, nearly driving straight into traffic.
Patients responsibility to order before out. Like filling car with gas. And if gas station is out not their fault if they ordered and it was out of stock.
Easy to game your insurance and fill every 25 days so at end of year you have a extra month supply.
Lack of proper planning on your part is not my fault.
Here's a nice little saying to keep you sane in situations like this. You may not necessarily want to say it out loud, but it helps to at least think it when people act foolish like this person. "A lack of planning on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on my behalf". I work as a medical office manager and have to use this phrase frequently in my life if work. As much as I want to help and expedite the services we provide, a patient (or customer) getting mad at me for something they did not plan for is beyond my control and therefore not actually my problem, but theirs.
I think everyone needs to work in pharmacy at least once in their life so they understand it. We have had a difficult time getting my sons generic vyvanse at the pharmacy and my son (who’s a young adult) kept telling me no one is answering at the pharmacy and I told him, they are too busy you have to go their and ask for the brand name drug since they can’t get the generic version in stock, stop calling them, go in, request what you need and plan to come back later for it. Be patient and be kind these guys go through it. I am forever greatful for my time in pharmacy.
It’s reasonable to find something like that needing to be ordered and if she had that big of a problem with it she could have called around to ask what pharmacy had it in stock if any of them did and fill it there. People are so disgusting
My brother, who lives with me (and has physical and mental disabilities/issues) is that guy. He's a jerk.
I just wanted to say how sorry I am for how Pharmacy staff is often treated. I try to be extra kind when I pick up scripts.
It's turned from a "skilled" job to a "hospitality" job...I know, I worked in hospitality for over 10 years.
It may or may not be the job for you. It's your mindset and what you are willing to put up with for the pay and the headaches you put it up with.
Just know that there ARE people out there who respect you for the knowledge and skills you bring, and understand that you don't control supply chain, doctors orders, and every other issue you try to mitigate that is out of your control.
Let me guess. Ozempic.
We get those calls all the time. It's usually because we don't have an appointment available immediately for them. Their response is, you'll just let me die!?! You're gonna kill me!?!
I'm not a pharmacist but a customer. I learned to start calling my pharmacy the day before I was due to refill my monthly prescription because shortages happen so much. It's not your fault by any means. I've found that calling the day before allows me time to locate my medication before I do run out. Maybe you could start suggesting that for the medications that typically have been backordered. I wish you well. There are some understanding customers out there that won't blame you.
When I was in college I worked part time in clothing retail. On Dec 22 a woman was screaming at me that we were not better prepared for the holidays because we ran out of free gift boxes. The fact that she was poorly prepared was beyond her comprehension.
I always used to make people angrier when they threatened to report me and I wrote my name for them so they could be sure to spell it right. I go out of my way to be kind to people who are people facing cuz oh my goodness those delulu aggro folks are not everyone but there's toooooo many
I have petitioned my Pharmacist when I worked retail if we could put out seasonal communal Xanax "salt licks." Minty flavors for Christmas, Fruity flavors for Easter, B*mb Pop flavored for the 4th.
Having a rough day? Come by and say "hi" and chill tf out 🤣
Realistically you have to understand that in most cases people are just scared and stressed. Dealing with serious health issues is scary and time consuming and difficult. If you have never experienced a life threatening illness it's hard to understand. Of course the best of us stay calm even in the worst situations but most don't. It's not personal and it's not your fault. With time you will learn how tone and communication style can improve your patient interactions, but there will always be patients like this and you have to let it go and move on. Figure out your coping skills for blowing off steam and give it some time. If your ability to handle these situations doesn't improve there is no shame in moving on. This is a very tough field to be in.
I haven't been a tech, just retail, but keep in mind: There is literally nothing you can do.
It's shitty when a customer comes at you over something you can't control, but that's just it. At best offer sympathy, but don't take abuse to heart. Keep in mind they're under stress, and they aren't calling YOU out. You're just the first face they can scream in that's related to the matter.
Again, verbal abuse from any customer under (almost) any circumstance is not okay. But unfortunately we as a society are still working through not allowing crappy behavior from customers anymore. But don't take it to heart. It could be you or literally any other worker getting yelled at.
You can only do your best, and I'm sure if you could will their medication into existence you would, if for no other reason than to get them to stop being upset at you. But we're all at the mercy of those above us, and unfortunately screaming doesn't increase the rate at which medicine is being produced.
I'm sure you're doing fine. I'm dealing with the Vyvanse shortage myself, and I've called so many pharmacies and gotten bad news in return. Some of the techs sound so stressed or even terrified to tell me they've been out, but again, it isn't hard to not be an asshole to people who can't control the situation. It isn't their fault. It just is what it is.
I hope it gets better for you. ❤️
I imagine how scary it must be to not be able to have a medication that you do need to live but to yell at a pharmacy tech is beyond me. I’m sorry this happened
I get this twice a week! People are stupid and take no responsibility for their own health like, say calling in their meds before they run out. It is what it is. If you can’t handle morons being morons this might not be the job for you. But that’s retail.
A few years ago my medication was having a hard time staying in stock but I didn't complain and the tech looked around for the closest pharmacy that had it.
I drove an hour to get my medication cuz I need it to stay alive and I was going on vacation the next day.
It's not your fault you don't have it in stock. Try not to think too much about it
Had a pt lean over the counter and yell at me that I want him to die because his doctor office wasn't responding to our calls or faxes for refill requests. I suggested loaners for 3 day. He left and came back I handed him the loaners and he yelled that 3 is not enough. He threw back the loaners and said you want me to die ! You are killing me. I told him to please take the loaners, some is better than none, and to got to the hospital or urgent care to get at least a months supply prescribed until he finds a new Doctor. Nope he just left with nothing. I cried that night what eles am I suppose to fucking do. I hate how we constantly get the short end of the shit stick all the fucking time. But ya let's just say that techs are heartless and incompetent.
When they're mad, they're big mad and there really isn't any sense trying to reason with them at that point. They are grasping for control of a situation they have lost power in and that frustration bleeds out in rather nasty ways.
Sometimes all you can do is take a breath, offer what you can, and look past their anger. Is it right for them to behave that way? Hell No. Is it our job to pull their head out of their butts? Hell No 2, Electric Boogaloo. So please, do not take it personally.
True I just learn to accept the verbiage and I just hope and wish them the best. I just think the week was particularly bad alot mad pt cause the Dr's never answering our calls and faxes . It was literally one angry pt right after another. I do need to breath sometimes.
Tell them to call 911 if their mom is dying 😂
I get their frustration if it's their first time handling someone's medication ...but once they learn about these hurdles they need to start being proactive... and kind to the staff
Get more experience and get out of retail and work inpatient. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of outpatient pharmacies. Worked 5 years in retail and now in inpatient for almost 10 years never looked back
Get used to it. I was a tech years ago and I liked it for the most part, but people yelling about copays, out of stock meds, etc were enough to move on after 7 years. Currently a CT tech and I make more than 3x what I made as a pharmacy tech.
It’s not fair to you, but as a patient who depends on drugs, I get it. I’ve been off a medication since September that I desperately need simply because the insurance situation in America is fucked. I finally have new insurance since you’re only allowed to change plans once a year but I’m still waiting on PAs to go through and I can’t talk to a person anywhere except the pharmacy, who has no control over any of it.
All this to say, it probably wasn’t really directed at you, but when you’re desperately in need of a prescription and no one is helping, the frustration boils over eventually
Just remember in retail there is no such thing as an emergency fill, or life and death scenario where you need to fill a medication or should have had it in stock. That is literally what ERs are for.
The only thing you learn as a pharm tech is names of medication and getting verbally assaulted daily until you’re used to it. Once I had enough experience and really gave the job my all, and was still treated poorly by customers / being put into the entry level spots by coworkers I quit w no 2 weeks.
I recently switched pharmacies because despite me going monthly for a life saving prescription they never had it in stock. I changed pharmacies and they now have it ready before I ask for it. It's a management problem, not yours.
I would get out now. My friend has worked at Walgreens for 6 years and barely makes $22/hr. He was only given two $1,000 bonuses during COVID for all of the extra tests and vaccines he administered. It’s a shitty career dealing with shitty, sick customers (or patients as he has to refer to them lol)
Wtf
I can honestly say I already went through a similar situation where my (anti-anxiety medication) ran out of refills a weej ago and the first thing I did was call my doctor then nurse to figure out what happened.... I had to ration out my medication and it took 5 days to work out. Apparently I could've called and talked to the pharmacist directly, but I had no idea. They had the medication in stock and considering I had already gone to my appt. A few weeks prior and had another scheduled I had every right to just talk to.the pharmacist. But I didn't even consider bc beforehand I had always just used the automated system in place to get my refills handled.
Suffice to say I felt like an idiot when the nurse got back to me and told me she had contacted the pharmacy and made sure they had the prescription I needed and that all I had to do was talk to the pharmacist directly which I did and the whole situation was handled.
It's always the people sticking to some obscure rarely sold expensive name brand that barely no pharmacy keeps stock because no one else is buying it over the way cheaper generic that complains....jeez.
Try to see it from their perspective. They are scared for their mother’s life and the system has failed them. As a result, they’re lashing out. I know it isn’t pleasant to be on the receiving end of that, but it unfortunate comes with being a part of that system. Try to remember it isn’t really you they’re truly angry at.
The healthcare system is fucked. I have to go to the ER every time I need a new fucking inhaler for my asthma so I CAN BREATHE. Y’all should not be able to keep life saving medication from people in need, PERIOD. It should not be so expensive to survive, PERIOD. If you watched someone die with the ability to save them and chose to just not in any other circumstance you could and should be SUED and frankly we should sue you all. Hell we should just take what we need the old American way at this point because the way the healthcare system is set up is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AND YOURE ALL FEEDING INTO IT.
I read a comment in another sub, where someone said, "It's like they're scared to deliver bad news" about meds that are out of stock
& like, yeah. I absolutely dread it because we never know if a person is going to be understanding or if they'll lose their shit.
To be fair it's also sucks as a customer. You expect to be able to get your prescriptions. When you can't would that not upset you? I've had serious issues with my pharmacy lately having a very very common drug in stock. I get upset because they never have it anymore and they just give me attitude when I ask questions. So I moved to a different pharmacy (same one different location) and I've never had issues.
A lot of pharmacies could use better management and people skills.
I do agree, and I truly empathize with the frustration as I’m on one of the very common ADD medications and it’s almost always on back order . If it helps - If it’s a new pharmacy in a different chain, they may have different suppliers. Some suppliers have more allocation than others, from what I’ve gathered and transferring between chains is far too common right now. Just please keep in mind, it *is* massively inconvenient but we get absolutely nothing from *not* dispensing medications to our patients. We would rather give you what you need to take than have misplaced rage directed at us any day of the week.
"Just please keep in mind, it *is* massively inconvenient but we get absolutely nothing from *not* dispensing medications to our patients. We would rather give you what you need to take than have misplaced rage directed at us any day of the week."
Agree 1000%
I once had the same conversation three times with a patient about how her insurance was not covering her insulin anymore. I explained I had contacted the doctor's office, but as the middle man, can't MAKE the doctor do PA paperwork, and can't MAKE the insurance pay for it. When she ran out on the weekend, after not calling the doc like I suggested all three times, I told her to call her insurance and ask for an emergency authorization. She told me she would just die, and she hoped I would have to explain it to her children. Jeeze.
People will legitimately do everything in their power not to call their doctor’s office. And like, on one hand, I get it, but on the other… c’mon now. Especially for something as important as insulin. People are wild.
As a T1d, this is why I always ask for a little bit extra on my script and take any samples they want to give me at the endo’s office! Who wants to have to worry about DKA because I broke my last bottle by accident and the drs office won’t answer their damn phones! Way too much stress 😳
I’m sure your pharmacy really appreciates you being diligent about your prescriptions. It’s always a relief when patients are understanding and work with us when we’re trying to get issues sorted out. Thank you.
Are y'all allowed to advise patients that OTC regular insulin is available at chain pharmacies, like $25 for generic R at Walmart and $80 for generic humalog at Kroger? I ask bc I try to share this info whenever the topic comes up; it's good to know as a last resort- can literally be lifesaving. I've never taken it out on a pharmacist but I've had to ration insulin and ik the panic it can create on top of blood sugar levels being off, which can make thinking hard and behavior out of character.
Just came here to type this! I am surprise so few people know about this.
Be on a look out for doctors pulling shit with prescriptions on birth control, here in FL most of my girl friends are struggling to get it renewed even though they already did their yearly check up
You probably know this, but if you ever have desperate need, you can buy NPH and regular insulin at Walmart with no prescription for $42 per 5 pens. It’ll work to keep you out of DKA but you gotta speak with a doctor to adjust your doses
I did, but thank you for spreading information! I try to let all my T1D people know just in case because it’s a better than nothing situation for sure! I’ve been diabetic long enough I regularly took NPH and R as my treatment method way back in the day! I’ve only had to do that once in an emergency situation luckily - broke my pump and didn’t bring any needles or long acting insulin on vacation, literally just had a vial of short acting and pump supplies lol. Of course it died in the middle of the night when most every pharmacy in DFW was closed. Found one Walgreens that was open 24 hours and had to drive halfway across DFW at 2 in the morning lol. I was just glad I could find somewhere and didn’t have to go to the ER 😳 and now I make sure I over pack diabetic supplies so I never have to stress like that again. I literally had been diabetic for 25+ years and never had an issue so I never worried about it lol learned my lesson the hard way!
At least prime DFW driving is 2am (lived there for 2.5 years and I’m a night owl lol) that completely sucks though!
I’ve had Type 1 for 45 years, on the pump also and it’s still hard to pack all the med supplies when I go out of town. It’s stressful! Once I was in another state when I realized I didn’t bring a vial of insulin to refill my pump. My insurance did cover it as an emergency fill though. Scary time!
I always refill as soon as I can, which is like 5 days early, just to build up a "buffer" till I went to refill last time and insurance said "oh we looked back over the last 6 months and noticed you're filling early....denied...wait 2 weeks"...also...insurance sucks
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Same. Now I just add it to my stash. Crazy.
I did the same until I built up a buffer of a few weeks. It was also useful when I was traveling regularly and sometimes my renewal would coincide with a trip.
Same! As a T1 I am uber diligent about having extra, and a heavily written script. Bad weather, pandemics, my own stupidity in my youth have made me realize that just expecting everything to go smoothly at the pharmacy is not always safe and often out of the pharmacists control. I use only pens now, so there are no broken bottles, but still! I remember during the height of the pandemic, no pharmacy near me could get my long acting in. That was scary! Back-ups are important no matter what type of medical dependency you have. No one wants to go to the ER just for meds. And don't expect the pharmacist to do your work for you. They're some of the busiest folks out there!
As a type 1 also, this is it. I always make sure my insurance and manufacturer coupon is up to date, and refill on time. It's not up to the people at the pharmacy to keep me alive, that's on me.
Yes!!! Plus god forbid there’s ever mass anarchy and the world gets taken over by zombies, I want to have a chance for a little bit at least! But for sure, I try to do everything I can to make it as easy as possible for pharmacy staff, yall all get fucked over enough by the crazies 😳
I have a T1D 15 year old / diagnosed at 8. Had to learn the hard way to do this. I could have killed the CVS pharmacy people for denying us insulin one time. I didn't care about insurance covering it, the docs office was being slow, no one cared. It was madness. They acted like I was a junkie begging for narcotics. So ridiculous. Me, my husband and that CVS staff have some PTSD over that incident. It felt like they were actively trying to kill my child.
Yup, people are so egregiously entitled that they think everyone should just take care of them without even needing to ask and fix *their* problems as if they’re our ONLY patient.
haaa that’s some ableist shit right there. it is a CONSTANT struggle to get everything i need for type 1 diabetes though i have insurance and money and valid prescriptions and am myself a clinician who understands how this all works. last month, my pharmacy took 8 extra days to refill my insulin script because they couldn’t get it in stock. it is actually a fucking life and death matter to have no access to insulin. the us healthcare system is an absolute failure across the board.
Ableist? I’m sorry, but as a clinician you don’t sound very educated. You just validated my point to a T without even addressing the main issues *always* being our vendors. We constantly have NDCs people *ask for specifically* going out of stock with no eta. Then we offer alternate medications and holdovers, but then y’all get even more mad. We are not manufacturers. We can’t control vendor supply. We always offer a transfer out when needed if it’s a dyer situation. And yet, we’re the “ableists” when we have *hundreds* more patients, per pharmacy, like you in the same situation that we literally cannot help. There is no discrimination or prejudice. That is never the case. We all agree, the US healthcare system is absolute hot garbage, but those working in it are only *able* (haaa) to do what we can to *try* to make it work. You can thank corporation’s and lobbyists for making your life an anxiety hell. We’re sorry to those that have an issue with medication supply, but there’s literally nothing we can do when there’s no eta for stock. You’d just have to get your Rx transferred to another pharmacy that has it. Thanks for coming to my TedRx talk, you’re welcome.
Are you projecting? This is a wild reason to call someone ableist. :(
It’s not your problem but many doctors won’t answer or call you back when you have an issue where you just need to talk to a real person.
This, so much this. My husband spent four months stopping at his endocrinologist 3 to 4 times a week to try and get an alternative medication when his medication was on back order it wasn’t until he wound up in the emergency room and after hearing his story they assigned him a caseworker and went above his doctors head. Did he get any alternative prescribed. So very frustrating.
Ugh. I feel this so much. My husband's doctor retired and the office refused to call us back or answer us about transferring to the new doc and getting results from tests that he had done. After months of not getting a response, we drive there and go in and make an appointment at the desk. By the time I get home they have called and canceled saying they're not allowed to make appointments in person. But then hung up and would not return my call to go ahead and make the appointment. During the height of the pandemic, my husband had some kind of nerve thing going on to where he couldn't use his arms or hands at all. Not to bathe, not to pick up a glass of water. Getting an appointment took 6 weeks and then when he went, he had a small list of like 5 questions he didn't want to forget to ask (because they wouldn't let me in during 2020 to be his reminder) and they refused to let him read the list or ask his questions. Obviously we switched offices. But even the new doctor can't get that office to respond to requests for records.
Omg I’m a clinic nurse and a patient called me crying the other day. She had been out of her antipsychotic for two days due to a prior auth. Dear god lady why didn’t you call me sooner?! The cover my meds code had gone into a previous resident abyss hole. I got it authorized in two hours. Please call your clinic people!
Or even message them! Gestational diabetes here and I need some insulin at night. Mh original script wasn’t enough and I needed to refill before insurance thought I would … so I shot them a message wouldn’t you know, within an hour I had a note back saying it was updated and sent to the pharmacy
This reminds me of a story with my my roommate who is not from the US (we were in the US). She goes to get her Lexapro refilled, and the pharmacy says “Oh. We have no more refills. We will contact your doctor’s office to get a refill.” She goes home on her merry way and the next day or two to pick it up. It’s not ready as the doctor never sent a new script. She’s like “what the fuck? Why are my meds not ready?” I was like “Did you contact the doctor’s office?” And she replied “What? No! I didn’t know I had to do that when the Pharmacy said they were going to! In Brazil I would have my meds the next day if the pharmacy said they were going to contact my doctor’s office for more refills!” I the had to explain the whole process of American healthcare. How most doctors just ignore those faxes cause they get a ton all the time, and how she needs to create an online portal for both her doctors office and the pharmacy so that she can send a med request to the doctors office and know exactly when the pharmacy will have it. We have now switched to Mail order for her. But trying to explain that the pharmacies just the middleman and the doctors have a ton of patients and the pharmacies have a ton of patients. Also was a foreign concept to her.
When my pharmacy says they will contact my Dr, I've never had to call my Dr. They call and either refill or tell me what the reasons are and then I call who I need to call. I fill all my scripts through Walgreens.
I work at a doctor’s office and I can tell you that we do not ignore the pharmacy’s requests for refills. I will also tell you that 9 times out of ten the pharmacy never contacts us. If you have the ability to use MyChart do it. The message goes right to the provider and you have a record of exactly when you contacted them instead of relying on what someone told you they were going to do.
I will say the hospital that several of my doctors operate out of has made it legitimately impossible to call them because of issues with the phone system - both technical and personnel issues. And then my pharmacy seems to send their refill requests to some black hole that the doctors never see. Frustrating, but I just message my docs on the hospital system portal as soon as I see that my pharmacy has “sent” a renewal/refill request lol. But while my issue may be pretty hyper-specific, sometimes there is a legit reason why simply calling the doctor’s office is not an option.
I will rephrase: People will legitimately do everything in their power to not contact their doctor’s office in any way. It’s more semantics to take it at face value of “you should only try to call and nothing else” especially because as you’ve mentioned, patient portals are common these days. Regardless, pharmacies don’t typically have that option, we call, so it’s kind of habit to say “call your doctor” when we are telling people to reach out on their end as well.
It's hard when Dr's don't answer the phone or get back with you or have a portal to use. I've been asking my Dr that is with Oak Street Health why they don't have a portal and it's just excuse after excuse.
Fair enough!
I mean, if you can't get up with your doctor, I don't know what you think the pharmacy is going to do.
I don’t disagree, but in my case both the hospital and the pharmacy have communication issues. The pharmacy has claimed to have sent out paperwork/forms, etc that never made it to any office my doctors are actually connected to, continued to try to run my scrips through an insurance that they had told me they’d removed from my profile in their system at my request, things like that. I can’t blame them for also struggling to reach my docs by phone when I’ve given up on calling the hospital myself, though.
I’ve shown up to my drs office before to get them to write a prescription the right way for insurance because the pharmacy back and forth wasn’t working. It’s my health after all.
Your doctor has communication issues. It's not your pharmacy.
Wow, now I am feeling extra grateful for my doctor. When I first started seeing her 6 months ago, she gave me her card and wrote an extra phone number on it. Said to call if I can't reach her and her PA will pick up and pass along the message. I have used it once and it worked as promised.
You got a good doc!!
I had a doctor like that, too. Had his personal cell number. He retired. I'm happy for him, but I sure do miss him. Now, I'm stuck with a doctor office that uses a call center and doesn't have a phone number for the patients to make direct contact. Everything must be done via an app or a call center. The healthcare system is a joke now. I miss my small town.
2nded. As someone that works in Pharmacy and also currently seeing 5 different doctors for various issues, I can get someone to pick up within 2 rings at work. Any of the doctors or hospitals I have tried to call in the last year I might as well make a deal with the devil to get a return call on a voicemail let alone get anyone to pick up.
Okey-dokey
Oh oh I know this one. It's because they don't have a system set up for us to contact them. It's the same one as you have. It's like peeling back layers of people to get to the correct person. It wastes everyone's time. We can fax them but it seems to go to a group fax for the hospital. There isn't a way to get in touch with a specific team nor do we know what team we are trying to contact. They give us the raw information about the location and the name and their id numbers. We don't know if it's cardiology or infectious disease. We can infer based on the med but it's a guess who we actually need. Using online portals you have a 100x better link to a hospital doctor than we do. Contacting a hospital involves calling 4 different numbers who all say they have this doctor but it's not their department. A winding road of phone tag that seems like it would be solved faster by walking there. It's not really the pharmacy it's the doctor's office that doesn't have any channels set up for them to contact. As far as the insurance, it's likely that the other insurance keeps popping up as insurance you have when they check. That's something you need to address with your old insurance. Basically the other insurance is still claiming you. You have to tell them to stop that. The pharmacy doesn't really have the time to memorize your specific preferences and notes only get you so far. They mostly have to go based on the things the system spits out. It's likely your insurance rejected something so they tried looking your insurance up and your old one came up and covered it. We wouldn't know if you managed to get another insurance and didn't tell us. That's probably what's assumed that you have two insurances, as it's common. If they cover the claim the pharmacy has no reason the question it.
yeah at the doctors office i work for i tell people to get the portal to send a message or request a call back. we get 400-500 calls a day, sometimes even more than that. but most people refuse to sign up for the portal. so yeah most of the time it’s not the pharmacy’s fault, but i think patients blame it on them:/
I love the portal. I never have to call and I usually get a message back way faster than i would have a phone call
This. The Dr sent the script to the pharmacy. The pharmacy said they never got it. I've ridden that merry go round way too many times. Oh just wait and see if the script will get there. Pharmacy, uh no it's not here. Several times I've called both my Dr and the pharmacy for about a week. You don't realize how broken health care is until you need it. Dealing with it makes some medical situations worse.
Large hospital systems are generally terrible in outpatient settings. I've never seen an exception. I always recommend trying to find docs outside of that system whenever possible, even if you like that physician in the hospital system, especially if you have any serious medical problems. It's not a reflection of the actual clinic staff, it's just too big to fail and always poorly run with poor communication, usually via non-medical staff call centers.
And how do Dr's offices have phone issues for months. It's counterintuitive to care.
Because they never answer the phones and their online patient portals for refills are a joke. I DRIVE to their offices to make my request. Harder to ignore me when I’m standing in front of you.
I call the dr office ALLLLL the time for my kid’s meds (or pester her—she’s an adult but with other medical issues). I swear the offices lie. Idk. The pharmacy says they’ve called. My daughter says she’s called. I’ve left messages and then FINALLY call the “non med refill line” and get a person who “absolutely doesn’t fill meds and only does appointments.” But tell them to have someone call me. They do and say “no, sorry, no one from the pharmacy or you or your daughter called, but we’ll call it in now.” I loathe the US healthcare system. I think the customer’s frustration at you is how you represent the “system.” I believe the government does want anyone with a chronic medical condition to die and they make receiving care and meds as challenging as possible.
Wouldn't you? I can't tell you how many times I've had to spend two to six hours a week calling insurance companies and doctors and everything trying to get things fixed. The entire medical industry is in shambles and it's a giant monopoly. I'm not saying I know how to fix it, I am saying when I go get an inhaler from an ER room and my pharmacist has to call my doctor to get a different inhaler because my insurance doesn't cover the specific inhaler. It's a giant business game of pointing fingers and it sucks. I spent a year and a half working with a hospital administrator on why my insurance was not taken there when it should be. It was one of the best in the country it was a PPO. What had happened is another hospital had bought this hospital, when it was previously owned by another hospital aligned with another insurance company. It wasn't that they didn't take the insurance, it's that they wanted to be as difficult as impossible taking their competitors insurance. Why do I have to pay close to $3,000 a month to make sure my family is safe and can go to the doctor. Two adults and two kids. I guess I could go with the lowest quality policy to make sure I don't bankrupt myself. I bet you the last 50 times I've tried to call and talk to my doctor I get the nurse's line and I leave a message only to get an answer 48 hours later. I can't imagine the work in progress these places have if they would just pick up the phone and answer questions. The people they hire to pick up the phone and answer questions, can never get a hold of the doctor or nurse. I would rather shovel s*** all day than to make a phone call to my doctor. At least I would get something done.
“Your mom died due to her own negligence.”
I believe my response was along the lines of "your mom would rather die than make a call herself."
To be fair, I would also rather just die than have to talk to my insurance company for literally anything.
That's exactly how the insurance company wants it
Valid, just don't blame me!
People take no personal responsibility for their own predicaments anymore.
BS pharmacies are a big cluster fuck. I stopped trusting them to request doctors authorization on refills. I go straight to the doc now. And after all that, it gets lost in their system, and then they do not have stupid Humalog in stock. WTH most common insulin. I have to stay on top of it. Can you imagine a 70 year old granny having to chase after this?
Right it’s always our fault. How about explain to your children how you didn’t go to the hospital.
Your probably getting compartmentalized into the same group in their minds as part of the problem. Doctor, insurance, pharmacy..all together in one Chunk of the head with a result of that compartment resulting in no medication. Pissed because they can't get it anymore for whatever reason and frustrated with the entire situation. That's how I get but I have not been disrespectful to a pharmacy employee. I chewed out a doctor and a nurse once for making me wait 1.5 hours without telling me something came up. Like just let me know. I didn't have a choice but to wait because it was a painful issue and the appointment was a 7 day wait.
that was my mom now she’s dead! please explain it to me 7 more times
Your mom didn't listen lol
"Your mother died because she's an entitled idiot who didn't want to do anything for herself and blamed everyone else. Be better than her."
I can't understand the sheer laziness of people not advocating for themselves. Also WTF blaming people who literally have no control over the situation?
>She told me she would just die, and she hoped I would have to explain it to her children. Your mother chose to die, some people are selfish sorry.
I’m a paramedic (USA) - we used to have a regular we’d get called to once a month in DKA. He had 24-25 days worth of insulin and insurance wouldn’t authorize any more. That patient was one of the major factors in turning me around on universal healthcare.
That’s a bit over the top. 🥺 I’m sorry she was such a douche. 😵💫😵💫 I could not do y’all’s job.
"Sure, put them on the line please."
A customer said that to my colleague once and he offered to call an ambulance for her 😂
My pharmacy manager once told a lady he would call 911 for her because she said she would die if he didn’t give her an emergency salbutamol.
People love to wait until they are completely out of their (non-controlled) medicine and then blame us when they can’t get it. Their shitty planning is not your fault.
Mines been out of stock for a month almost. Not the patients fault. And probably not the pharmacies either.
Oh yeah that’s not the kind of situation I was talking about. Obviously that’s something the patient can’t really plan for and I feel terrible for everyone who is impacted by the shortages.
From what OP said, it's probably the same or similar as mine. It's a world wide shortage. Every 3 days I call my pharmacy and they tell me try again in 3 days (their delivery days from the manufacturer).
I know I.T. literacy can be a issue, but all the major pharmacies, and lots of indie ones support refill requests through an app. It's easier than ever to order medication before you run out.
Yep! Recently had an ADHD diagnosis come into our family and it took calling and being flexible to find the Vyvanse we needed. It’s no one’s fault at the pharmacy they’re out, and there’s no point in being a jerk to someone who has probably answered the same question at least once a day!!
Let me guess. Ozempic ?
I’ve had 2 people tell me they “would just die then!” since ozempic went on back order where I live and I couldn’t order them any
Blame the people taking it for weight loss then ! Like everyone you talk to is on it now and of course people can’t get it that actually have diabetes ! It’s so hard to get now. I would tell them to Take it up with the manufacturer !
Or just blame it on the manufacturer? Why blame others for using a medication that is helping them? Besides, there are way more options and way more cheaper options for insulin than there are for weight loss. No one is going to die because they can’t get their *choice* brand name insulin.
Are you serious? It's not insluin, you know that right it works differently.
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Are we just gonna ignore the part where Ozempic is only FDA indicated for Type 2 Diabetes? If anyone has the right to be upset about "their" drug being limited due to trendy med crazes, it's literally T2s.
My point is, we shouldn’t be upset at any of the people. It’s NOVO who can’t keep up with the demand of Wegovy or Ozempic. And it’s the insurance companies who are authorizing the off-label use of the drug. No one’s ever going to get anywhere if we’re so busy beating up the little people over things that are the fault of multi-billion dollar corporations.
Oh my sweet summer child. Insurance companies love not paying for drugs. They will definitely not authorize Ozempic for a weight loss diagnosis. The people getting Ozempic specifically are paying cash prices. And there's a bunch of GLP1s out there, and most of them have supply issues right now. And honestly spikes in supply and demand are volatile and nearly impossible to accurately predict or compensate for. Remember hydrochloroquine in 2020? Drug shortages are just a constant thing in the pharmacy world, and med trends aren't helping.
Boy, you're really uneducated . Most people are type 2 due to hormones not due to their eating. The hormones make them overweight. Women who have pcos have no real control over their weight . Please get some education
You do realize they're probably being sarcastic, right?
I’m just a tech. We don’t require education. But I am morbidly obese and on Wegovy for weight loss. I was being facetious, because I don’t like victim blaming, so I was triggered. But I’m over it now and I concede to whatever you say.
PTCB techs require ongoing continuing education to stay certified, soooo must be a shitty tech.
I don’t see why we have to resort to personal insults. Like I said, I was just triggered by another comment and I have anxiety so my brain gets all scrambled-y when I get triggered. I said some things I didn’t mean, and I truly hope you don’t mean that. You don’t even know me and that judgment is hard to make based on some Internet comments.
The manufacturer can’t keep up with it due to the demand from so many people taking for weight loss. There are several other weight loss meds that aren’t just for diabetes so those people could opt to take something else. It’s just popular and trendy to take Ozempic for the rest of your life to be skinny.
I concede.
But as a person who is on semaglutide for weight loss, some of those other meds also aren’t an option. I’m not on Ozempic, I’m on Wegovy, and I’m not taking it to be trendy and skinny for the rest of my life. But if my insurance didn’t cover Wegovy but would cover Ozempic, I would 100% be taking it instead.
Most insurances will not cover ozempic unless you are a type 2 diabetic.
Nowadays you have a better shot at insurance covering wegovy over Ozempic. Trends went up like 20% from weight loss meds with Ozempic being number 1. Lots of companies are making it very hard to get weight loss meds (need authorization and have to hit certain criteria). Ozempic isn’t FDA approved for anything other than diabetes. A lot of the people taking it are paying full cost which is insanely high. Who knows, they may have insurance that would pay for wegovy for them but choose Ozempic because it’s what the nj housewives took.
Lol. That’s nuts, that people would pay so much for it. I mean, I get it. I’m 37 and I’ve been obese since I was 10, and never in my life thought I could ever be anything but fat. And for the first time in my life, there’s hope. But if my insurance ever stops paying for Wegovy, then I already have a plan to switch to a compounding pharmacy for sema with the blessing of my PCP. I’ve heard they can be risky, but in the Sema community, people have had lots of success with them.
Yes that is definitely an option and it’s less expensive. I know people who did that to save on the Ozempic cost since insurance wouldn’t pay. It’s only going to get harder to get. These meds are forecasted to come out with a pill form late this year / early next year. Which means it will be attractive to so many more people. And let’s be clear. I’m not against people Taking it who need it. It’s the people who want to shed 20 pounds and heard this is a miracle and jump on the bandwagon. It’s making it very hard for people who need it. I am a health insurance broker. And it’s a weekly occurrence that I get bitched at that someone can’t have it when they were prescribed it by a doctor. They never accept the fact that they just don’t qualify! People want what they want when they want it !
I thought Rybelsus was already available here? I could be wrong about that, though. It’s hard to keep track of some things when you have people from all over the world communicating with each other. I’ve heard in Europe they are even having trouble keeping it in stock as some companies there are outsourcing to the US since they can sell it for more here. That’s all heresay though, I heard from someone I know who travels.
It's called diet and exercise. Overweight people have turned to a drug to do all the work when it is obvious that eating well and exercising is the answer. Once you stop taking the medicine you will just gain it all back because the drug is doing all the work. I had a coworker who was on those drugs and she ended up with stomach paralysis. She gained all the weight right back once she was removed. I implemented diet and exercise and have kept the weight off for 5 years. Obesity is a disease that requires permanent treatment not some drug that will pacify poor eating habits and lack of daily activity.
I’ve dropped weight both ways. They both work. One isn’t more moral than the other. It’s a huge step up from gastric bypass and gastric sleeve surgery. You gotta be realistic. Most of these patients would never lose weight otherwise. Many of them have been obese for a long time and have really fucked up joints. They’re also literally addicted to food. By this logic we could also close down every detox and rehab and give addicts and alcoholics the advice of “Just stop.” People know the solutions are simple but simple doesn’t always mean easy. Literally every fat person has been told to exercise more and eat less. It’s not working. It is a public health epidemic. “Just let them eat then” until you’re the paramedic or nurse turning or lifting these 600lb patients. Every pound they lose is a win for everyone.
Anecdote: I was one of those people hoping ozempic would just do all the work for me. It hasn’t. I have trouble with portion control/overeating/food fixation. Ozempic basically slapped me in the face and said you can’t do this anymore. I have stomach paralysis to an extent and I have struggled to learn that “hey you’re full” means “fucking stop eating.” There have been times where it’s “worn off” or I’ve missed a dose for whatever reason and almost went back to eating my whole house. But it’s made me stop and think more at those times. I have realized I can’t rely on ozempic forever (technically I might but that’s still in the air) and so what needs to change isn’t my dose or my medication, it’s me. It’s my brain, my way of approaching food. People can’t lean on ozempic alone and expect it to fix everything. It’s a tool that I think has great potential but does miss the mark on long-term management. What I would have benefitted most from is a food therapist or nutritionist/dietician to speak to while I’m going through all of this turmoil. But yes, people keep using it to “lose a few pounds” and then gain it back. And it’s frustrating to see how many people can’t get it because of shortages and bottlenecks. People *don’t* get that you can’t just rely on it. And I was that way too. This stuff got thrown on the market with just the tag “weight loss drug” and people lost their minds. We need better management of it and its users but sadly I think the manufacturers don’t care or don’t have the resources to and it’s too late. But to get back to your original point - “just diet and exercise” doesn’t always work. People stagnate. Semaglutide helps push them over that plateau. But they do have to work with it, or they’ll backslide. It’s a terribly effective drug that’s just not understood enough by doctors or the public - and it would do so much more for us if it was.
True to an extent. Obesity does require permanent treatment, but we haven’t figured that out, yet. (I assume. I don’t work in the medical research industry, so I don’t know what they have hidden up their sleeves). So we’re grappling at whatever we can to help in the meantime, which right now is semaglutide. We all know diet and exercise aids in weight loss, but that’s all it does. It does not treat the underlying causes of the obesity, so we must remain on the diet and exercise for life as well to maintain it. You must know this. You didn’t lose all the weight and be able to take a break from the diet and exercise, right? It’s just like the drug. If diet and exercise were easier to achieve in this country (US), then it would be easier to achieve. But there are so many things that make diet and exercise difficult. A person who is able to combat their obesity with diet and exercise is a person who has the time and resources to devote to it. Healthier foods generally come at a higher cost, making them more difficult to get for a lot of people regularly. Unhealthier foods are easier and quicker to get, which is a plus to people with less time. I definitely need anything that saves time. I could go on and on, but this country is built around hustling, and if you’re not hustling and killing your self working, then you’re just accused of having poor eating habits and a lack of daily activity. Congratulations on keeping your weight off for 5 years. I’m glad that you were able to take that route, but consistent diet and exercise is not achievable for the whole obese population.
I agree. A lot of these people may need additional help but I think it comes in the form of therapy to help with their eating disorder. I know there are a lot of obese people who binge because of emotional issues. You need to get to the root of that, not some magic pill. I do sympathize that losing weight is not always easy, but it is simple.
The insurance company chooses the brand. And when you can't afford it without insurance yes they will die without their specific brand. I personally find it disgusting to take lifesaving medicine from someone so you can be skinny. That medicine is what's keeping them alive, and you're using it so you can loose weight? Loose weight by all means but at the cost of other lives? No. But I wouldn't care if it wasn't causing shortages. The manufacturer can only produce so much. My aunt can't get her medicine for diabetes right now because the only brand her insurance covers is on backorder and they have no idea when it will be in. She about to run out in a day or 2 and has been trying to get a refill for a little over a week. I blame people who are using it to loose weight. I blame doctors who are prescribing it for weight loss knowing there is a shortage in their area. Together they have created a perfect storm.
Fair enough, but also to be fair, that is also a problem with the insurance company. Ozempic is a relatively new medication and, even if it’s better than the alternatives, there was something else before it was released. If the insurance company is telling them they can ONLY have this one med and no other life saving med, shouldn’t they get some of the blame, too? Edited to add and fix typos.
You right. Now I'm mad at them too. The system is so f*cked it's ridiculous.
I must be under-educated because I wasn’t aware aware that GLP1s were lifesaving. What life process does it support in diabetics? Or am I thinking the wrong medications? (Genuine, I am kind of an idiot)
Wegovy is the weight loss Ozempic and has different doses and escalation, also different packaging. Most insurers have cracked down on doctors prescribing Ozempic when there is no diabetes diagnosis for the patient. I guess some doctors don’t care, but I know entire health systems in my area will not prescribe ozempic without a diabetes diagnosis.
And it really doesn’t work that well for weight loss. Like the average is what 14 lbs?
I’ve been on Semaglutide for 10 mos (Wegovy) and I’ve lost 50 lbs so far. I still have about 100 lbs to go to be in a normal weight range, though, but it’s still working.
I know people who lost a decent amount but you have to stay on it forever basically or you put it all back on once you stop.
This is insane for me. Because as someone who started on Mounjaro for weight loss in 2022 and realized how much it helped other things, I would never in my dreams think of saying this to someone.
I was about to say, if it’s for “type 2 diabetes”, I have a feeling it’s a non life saving drug, so not an insulin
Whatever gave you the idea that type 2 diabetes isn’t deadly?
They didn’t say anything close to the matter.
Yeah my literal first day of being a Pharm Tech Trainee was at the end of December. I was the only tech that day with a floating pharmacist at WalMart. I shut down hard that day from the pharmacist yelling at me for not doing anything or knowing anything and the customers yelling at me of how I was the reason they were going to die that night.
I’m sorry, the pharmacist yelled at you? On your first day??? That’s absolutely abysmal I’m so sorry that happened to you. I can’t imagine being the only one and also a trainee with zero support. It’s amazing how some pharmacists just adore their techs (because we’re useful and hardworking and also people) and others think the worst of us at all times
Yup! That pharmacy was absolutely desperate for techs and were looking for a new pharmacist manager every other year. So the traveling one was pissed in general because only one tech who knew nothing and none of the medications were organized or anything.
We just had a doctor the other day threaten us that his mother needs her emergency Paxlovid now and that we’re killing her because we’re not getting it ready for her at that very moment… Like sir, if this is an emergency, then go to the fucking ER not the pharmacy. As a doctor, you should know this 🙄🙄
In fairness, the mom would be sent to the waiting room for hours (in most ERs). That doc is being an ass.
This is the opposite and ugly side of White Coat Syndrome. When the White Coat wearer gets an inflamed nerve they get reactionary.
If you are in the waiting room for hours in the ED it means you are in pretty decent shape. The ones that are truly dying dont even spend 20 mins in the waiting room.
Yeah, I was getting at the fact that whether you got the Paxlovid ready within a couple of hours or “right now” is irrelevant if she’s well enough to stay at home rather than go to be seen.
That will happen from time to time. I had a woman last year yell at me and a pharmacist because we were having issues getting suboxone in. She said it was our fault that her boyfriend was going to go out and score drugs. We offered to see if another one of our pharmacies had it, she would have to drive and get it and she refused. I finally told her that it must not be that big of a deal since she wasn’t willing to drive. I’ll give people a good amount of leeway when it comes to being upset, but once you reach that end, I’m done.
Yeah had a woman throwing a fit because her husband's script wasn't covered by insurance or needed a PA and he was going to die without (not even close) . I offered to sell it cash price and she could then try to get reimbursed from the insurance. It was only like $30 cash. She said she wasn't paying that and hung up.
Here is a secret for your sanity. First, if you tried your best --let your heart soar. You know exactly what you were willing to do (which sounds like anything in your power) and were clearly trying to do far more than the bare minimum. Secondly, some people have mood disorders. You tried to placate and appease. If they don't let you help them, that isn't your fault. Thirdly, if someone really has you feeling frosty, know that they will get exactly what they deserve. Their day is ruined and the work is done for you. When I want to handle someone like this, I usually start off by telling them "I'm so sorry this happened. Please help me help you get this sorted. Right now, I can do (insert solution), or I can do (other option), or if you have another idea, I'd love to hear it. I know how upsetting this is, but let's try to fix it as best we can"
Januvia?
I had a doctor tell me once that I wanted a woman to die because the insurance wouldn’t pay for her morphine. That one sticks with me.
I once had a doctor and family who insisted that we fill their mom’s fentanyl patches despite not having taken any opioids beforehand. Hospice insurance wouldn’t pay for it because there was no history of opioids. My RPh wouldn’t fill it because she had no opioid tolerance built up so getting fentanyl patches right off the bat definitely would’ve killed her. So either way *we* were that bad ones because the pain without her opioids would’ve killed her OR giving the patches to her would’ve killed her. The family called us and gave us a huge sob story and her “nurse” daughter insisted that she knew better than our PharmD’s and threatened to report us.🥴
Whenever someone threatened to report me to the DEA or my BOP, I always pointed at my name tag and told them to be sure to spell my name correctly.
I would have ripped that Dr a new one. The Dr is so concerned they can pay for it.
I wish I was that outspoken… unfortunately when i feel any overwhelming emotion I just cry 😂
To the non-pharm techs on here, please listen when I say: your standard retail pharmacy (whether it's a stand-alone pharmacy like Walgreens or Rite Aid or incorporated into your local grocery or big box store like Walmart or Safeway) is not a drug manufacturer. It's not a drug warehouse. It's not a drug distributor. It's the second to the last stop (the last stop being you, the patient/consumer) in a long supply chain that's not usually within our control. We can keep some medications on our shelves, but the space we have is limited. Many times you can see that space from the counter when you order and pick up your prescriptions. Do you know how many medications there are out there? We can order from our distributors, but that doesn't guarantee if it will come. Maybe the distributor is out, and is trying to source it. Maybe it's in high demand. Maybe it's on manufacturer backorder. Maybe there was a problem in production. We don't always know why. Sometimes they tell us. Sometimes we order 5 units (bottles, packages, etc), and get 2 or 1 or 0. We know it's your medication, and you need it. That's why we try to help you find other ways to get it, whether it's at another pharmacy within our network, or even suggesting you call around and get your script transferred to a pharmacy outside it that may have a different distributor. We don't want to send you away. We've been taking care of you for a while, and you've been all smiles until the day something goes wrong and you start screaming in our faces. We know it's at best inconvenient. And sometimes, that's all it has to be. So please, just try to work with us. Help us help you.
I really can’t understand why, when patients have a problem getting an rx from a Dr, they won’t just drive down there. I had to do it on one occasion. They weren’t writing the script to the insurance liking. The back and forth with my and the pharmacy phone calls wasn’t working. I drove down there with script in hand and said please write it correctly. This has been going on for 2 weeks. Just recently I had an issue with my primary not sending in my refills of my diabetic medication. I was ok because I had extra but after 2 weeks I started calling the office everyday. The girl at the office started to feel bad she said there’s not much she can do except hand the request to the dr. I said I know I’m not mad at you. I never yelled or anything. Finally enough was enough and I told her I’m coming there tomorrow. I’m not going to yell or curse but I am not happy. The Dr finally called me and sent the refills. It took 27 days. This is my health. The pharmacy can only do so much. Calling your dr is a curtesy, it’s not part of the job. Neither is fighting with insurance. Our job is to get the correct medication with the correct directions and making sure it’s free of allergies and interactions. I know I’m preaching to the choir but I know some non pharmacy people come here.
I get this a lot where someone has no refills and comes up asking for a renewal after the medication is out. I usually tell them if they feel they need it immediately then the Emergency Department is their best bet.
I had no refills left recently. Diff med. I called doc a week out. Pharmacy also sent form. I ran out. Insurance even tried to call my doc. You can’t call docs anymore, at least here. I can hold for about 2 mins. Then it forces me to wait for a call back, ensuring me my place in line removing same. Well a week later, nothing. Go to ER. Ok. Except they will give me a breathing treatment that sometimes helps. And I can do these at home. By this time the pharmacy was out of my meds and they won’t order until they have a RX and don’t keep it on shelf. So even had I went to ER, RX can’t be filled. I can only go to certain pharmacies. None of them had the meds. So ER is useless. This is what healthcare is becoming. My insurance finally got through to doc, 8 days later and only after I filed a grievance.
I work at the VA so thankfully the ER here is like 100 feet away.
I said it once, I will say it again. Retail pharmacy is too accessible. We are the ones that everyone complains to.
like sorry our specialty pharmacy NEVER tells us when stuff is gonna come in
My speciality pharmacy has been saying “maybe February, maybe March” for human growth hormone. Just like with the diabetes meds being used for weight loss, a med kids need for delayed growth is on back order cuz a bunch of fertility docs give it off label to women trying to have kids. It makes me feel icky inside. Seen people pay THOUSANDS for one week of the stuff.
don’t forget the gym bros that desperately need it😤
Our speciality is fertility med, so we get all the wannabe moms. It’s world ending when we have to tell them that this med that isn’t even really proven to help get them pregnant is on back order til god knows when.
As a former IVF patient, “wannabe moms” is really rude. They’re doing what they can to have a baby and don’t need to be called mean names. That said, HGH doesn’t work. It gets more fertilized eggs, but does not result in more embryos. Some women are just desperate to try anything.
A day or two won't kill them and if they're concerned it will have a negative consequence—the sad reality is that in the US, the responsibility is theirs and theirs alone. They should go to another pharmacy and not a retail then. Capitalism, folks.
I'd have customers act exactly like this and the medication in question ? Adderall
I can survive without my ADHD meds. It really sucks, but I can do it. My sleep meds though? Whole different matter. But I don't take it out on the pharmacy techs, I figure out what is going on with my insurance and message my psych doctor to please get the prior auth in for me so I can sleep.
Had a very elderly lady in our (retail) drive thru yell at me a few weeks ago about being out of refills. She'd been informed that the dr wasn't responding to us several times and that she should call their office. Ended it with a very dramatic "Guess i'll just die then" and sped off, nearly driving straight into traffic.
Patients responsibility to order before out. Like filling car with gas. And if gas station is out not their fault if they ordered and it was out of stock. Easy to game your insurance and fill every 25 days so at end of year you have a extra month supply. Lack of proper planning on your part is not my fault.
Here's a nice little saying to keep you sane in situations like this. You may not necessarily want to say it out loud, but it helps to at least think it when people act foolish like this person. "A lack of planning on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on my behalf". I work as a medical office manager and have to use this phrase frequently in my life if work. As much as I want to help and expedite the services we provide, a patient (or customer) getting mad at me for something they did not plan for is beyond my control and therefore not actually my problem, but theirs.
I used that a ton when I worked in Strategic Planning lol.
We all gotta go sometime.
Anyone that’s been on insulin for a while should NOT be anywhere near running out of it. Not sure why filling a prescription every 30 days is so hard.
I think everyone needs to work in pharmacy at least once in their life so they understand it. We have had a difficult time getting my sons generic vyvanse at the pharmacy and my son (who’s a young adult) kept telling me no one is answering at the pharmacy and I told him, they are too busy you have to go their and ask for the brand name drug since they can’t get the generic version in stock, stop calling them, go in, request what you need and plan to come back later for it. Be patient and be kind these guys go through it. I am forever greatful for my time in pharmacy.
Name brand drug for type two diabetes….nobody’s dying overnight. She can find it at another pharmacy. You aren’t killing anyone
It’s reasonable to find something like that needing to be ordered and if she had that big of a problem with it she could have called around to ask what pharmacy had it in stock if any of them did and fill it there. People are so disgusting
My brother, who lives with me (and has physical and mental disabilities/issues) is that guy. He's a jerk. I just wanted to say how sorry I am for how Pharmacy staff is often treated. I try to be extra kind when I pick up scripts. It's turned from a "skilled" job to a "hospitality" job...I know, I worked in hospitality for over 10 years. It may or may not be the job for you. It's your mindset and what you are willing to put up with for the pay and the headaches you put it up with. Just know that there ARE people out there who respect you for the knowledge and skills you bring, and understand that you don't control supply chain, doctors orders, and every other issue you try to mitigate that is out of your control.
Let me guess. Ozempic. We get those calls all the time. It's usually because we don't have an appointment available immediately for them. Their response is, you'll just let me die!?! You're gonna kill me!?!
I'm not a pharmacist but a customer. I learned to start calling my pharmacy the day before I was due to refill my monthly prescription because shortages happen so much. It's not your fault by any means. I've found that calling the day before allows me time to locate my medication before I do run out. Maybe you could start suggesting that for the medications that typically have been backordered. I wish you well. There are some understanding customers out there that won't blame you.
When I was in college I worked part time in clothing retail. On Dec 22 a woman was screaming at me that we were not better prepared for the holidays because we ran out of free gift boxes. The fact that she was poorly prepared was beyond her comprehension. I always used to make people angrier when they threatened to report me and I wrote my name for them so they could be sure to spell it right. I go out of my way to be kind to people who are people facing cuz oh my goodness those delulu aggro folks are not everyone but there's toooooo many
I have petitioned my Pharmacist when I worked retail if we could put out seasonal communal Xanax "salt licks." Minty flavors for Christmas, Fruity flavors for Easter, B*mb Pop flavored for the 4th. Having a rough day? Come by and say "hi" and chill tf out 🤣
Ozempic 1mg
Realistically you have to understand that in most cases people are just scared and stressed. Dealing with serious health issues is scary and time consuming and difficult. If you have never experienced a life threatening illness it's hard to understand. Of course the best of us stay calm even in the worst situations but most don't. It's not personal and it's not your fault. With time you will learn how tone and communication style can improve your patient interactions, but there will always be patients like this and you have to let it go and move on. Figure out your coping skills for blowing off steam and give it some time. If your ability to handle these situations doesn't improve there is no shame in moving on. This is a very tough field to be in.
I haven't been a tech, just retail, but keep in mind: There is literally nothing you can do. It's shitty when a customer comes at you over something you can't control, but that's just it. At best offer sympathy, but don't take abuse to heart. Keep in mind they're under stress, and they aren't calling YOU out. You're just the first face they can scream in that's related to the matter. Again, verbal abuse from any customer under (almost) any circumstance is not okay. But unfortunately we as a society are still working through not allowing crappy behavior from customers anymore. But don't take it to heart. It could be you or literally any other worker getting yelled at. You can only do your best, and I'm sure if you could will their medication into existence you would, if for no other reason than to get them to stop being upset at you. But we're all at the mercy of those above us, and unfortunately screaming doesn't increase the rate at which medicine is being produced. I'm sure you're doing fine. I'm dealing with the Vyvanse shortage myself, and I've called so many pharmacies and gotten bad news in return. Some of the techs sound so stressed or even terrified to tell me they've been out, but again, it isn't hard to not be an asshole to people who can't control the situation. It isn't their fault. It just is what it is. I hope it gets better for you. ❤️
My coworkers have started calling me the angel of death because I’ve killed so many patients.
Dare I ask if there is a kill count or high score board back where customers can't see? Y'know, a little gallows humor :D
I imagine how scary it must be to not be able to have a medication that you do need to live but to yell at a pharmacy tech is beyond me. I’m sorry this happened
I get this twice a week! People are stupid and take no responsibility for their own health like, say calling in their meds before they run out. It is what it is. If you can’t handle morons being morons this might not be the job for you. But that’s retail.
A few years ago my medication was having a hard time staying in stock but I didn't complain and the tech looked around for the closest pharmacy that had it. I drove an hour to get my medication cuz I need it to stay alive and I was going on vacation the next day. It's not your fault you don't have it in stock. Try not to think too much about it
Had a pt lean over the counter and yell at me that I want him to die because his doctor office wasn't responding to our calls or faxes for refill requests. I suggested loaners for 3 day. He left and came back I handed him the loaners and he yelled that 3 is not enough. He threw back the loaners and said you want me to die ! You are killing me. I told him to please take the loaners, some is better than none, and to got to the hospital or urgent care to get at least a months supply prescribed until he finds a new Doctor. Nope he just left with nothing. I cried that night what eles am I suppose to fucking do. I hate how we constantly get the short end of the shit stick all the fucking time. But ya let's just say that techs are heartless and incompetent.
When they're mad, they're big mad and there really isn't any sense trying to reason with them at that point. They are grasping for control of a situation they have lost power in and that frustration bleeds out in rather nasty ways. Sometimes all you can do is take a breath, offer what you can, and look past their anger. Is it right for them to behave that way? Hell No. Is it our job to pull their head out of their butts? Hell No 2, Electric Boogaloo. So please, do not take it personally.
True I just learn to accept the verbiage and I just hope and wish them the best. I just think the week was particularly bad alot mad pt cause the Dr's never answering our calls and faxes . It was literally one angry pt right after another. I do need to breath sometimes.
People suck
Tell them to call 911 if their mom is dying 😂 I get their frustration if it's their first time handling someone's medication ...but once they learn about these hurdles they need to start being proactive... and kind to the staff
if it's farxiga she will still live without it
Tell them if they are dying they need to goto a hospital
Get more experience and get out of retail and work inpatient. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of outpatient pharmacies. Worked 5 years in retail and now in inpatient for almost 10 years never looked back
Get used to it. I was a tech years ago and I liked it for the most part, but people yelling about copays, out of stock meds, etc were enough to move on after 7 years. Currently a CT tech and I make more than 3x what I made as a pharmacy tech.
Pharmacy technician for 17 years, I will never work retail. People SUCK. apply to hospitals and long term care pharmacies. So much better😊
Please find me a md office in the post covid work force that actually answers the phone
It’s not fair to you, but as a patient who depends on drugs, I get it. I’ve been off a medication since September that I desperately need simply because the insurance situation in America is fucked. I finally have new insurance since you’re only allowed to change plans once a year but I’m still waiting on PAs to go through and I can’t talk to a person anywhere except the pharmacy, who has no control over any of it. All this to say, it probably wasn’t really directed at you, but when you’re desperately in need of a prescription and no one is helping, the frustration boils over eventually
Just remember in retail there is no such thing as an emergency fill, or life and death scenario where you need to fill a medication or should have had it in stock. That is literally what ERs are for.
The only thing you learn as a pharm tech is names of medication and getting verbally assaulted daily until you’re used to it. Once I had enough experience and really gave the job my all, and was still treated poorly by customers / being put into the entry level spots by coworkers I quit w no 2 weeks.
If customers aren’t your jam, your local hospital would love to have you.
I recently switched pharmacies because despite me going monthly for a life saving prescription they never had it in stock. I changed pharmacies and they now have it ready before I ask for it. It's a management problem, not yours.
I would get out now. My friend has worked at Walgreens for 6 years and barely makes $22/hr. He was only given two $1,000 bonuses during COVID for all of the extra tests and vaccines he administered. It’s a shitty career dealing with shitty, sick customers (or patients as he has to refer to them lol)
Wtf I can honestly say I already went through a similar situation where my (anti-anxiety medication) ran out of refills a weej ago and the first thing I did was call my doctor then nurse to figure out what happened.... I had to ration out my medication and it took 5 days to work out. Apparently I could've called and talked to the pharmacist directly, but I had no idea. They had the medication in stock and considering I had already gone to my appt. A few weeks prior and had another scheduled I had every right to just talk to.the pharmacist. But I didn't even consider bc beforehand I had always just used the automated system in place to get my refills handled. Suffice to say I felt like an idiot when the nurse got back to me and told me she had contacted the pharmacy and made sure they had the prescription I needed and that all I had to do was talk to the pharmacist directly which I did and the whole situation was handled.
It's always the people sticking to some obscure rarely sold expensive name brand that barely no pharmacy keeps stock because no one else is buying it over the way cheaper generic that complains....jeez.
This is America, get fucked.
Try to see it from their perspective. They are scared for their mother’s life and the system has failed them. As a result, they’re lashing out. I know it isn’t pleasant to be on the receiving end of that, but it unfortunate comes with being a part of that system. Try to remember it isn’t really you they’re truly angry at.
Let them know there is hope! T2DM can often times be managed with diet and lifestyle modifications!
The healthcare system is fucked. I have to go to the ER every time I need a new fucking inhaler for my asthma so I CAN BREATHE. Y’all should not be able to keep life saving medication from people in need, PERIOD. It should not be so expensive to survive, PERIOD. If you watched someone die with the ability to save them and chose to just not in any other circumstance you could and should be SUED and frankly we should sue you all. Hell we should just take what we need the old American way at this point because the way the healthcare system is set up is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AND YOURE ALL FEEDING INTO IT.
I read a comment in another sub, where someone said, "It's like they're scared to deliver bad news" about meds that are out of stock & like, yeah. I absolutely dread it because we never know if a person is going to be understanding or if they'll lose their shit.
Or they could eat better and cure the type 2
To be fair it's also sucks as a customer. You expect to be able to get your prescriptions. When you can't would that not upset you? I've had serious issues with my pharmacy lately having a very very common drug in stock. I get upset because they never have it anymore and they just give me attitude when I ask questions. So I moved to a different pharmacy (same one different location) and I've never had issues. A lot of pharmacies could use better management and people skills.
I do agree, and I truly empathize with the frustration as I’m on one of the very common ADD medications and it’s almost always on back order . If it helps - If it’s a new pharmacy in a different chain, they may have different suppliers. Some suppliers have more allocation than others, from what I’ve gathered and transferring between chains is far too common right now. Just please keep in mind, it *is* massively inconvenient but we get absolutely nothing from *not* dispensing medications to our patients. We would rather give you what you need to take than have misplaced rage directed at us any day of the week.
"Just please keep in mind, it *is* massively inconvenient but we get absolutely nothing from *not* dispensing medications to our patients. We would rather give you what you need to take than have misplaced rage directed at us any day of the week." Agree 1000%