I’m sure they were legal prescriptions, but the government wants pharmacies to police doctors. Instead of just getting the doctor in trouble for writing for excess opioids, they want the pharmacies to be in trouble for filling the prescription the doctor wrote.
The pharmacies make more money for selling more scripts, so the company isn’t incentivized to police the doctors and tell them “no” and there isn’t a set guideline on who to tell no and for what reason, but somehow the pharmacies are at fault.
My take is that if the federal or state governments feel that doctors are writing too many opioid scripts, they should go after the doctors, not the pharmacies.
An addict will get or steal prescriptions from multiple doctors. How does policing doctors prevent abuse as well as making the pharmacy the gatekeeper?
There are lots of laws and regulations that don’t really work 100%, but make it harder for the crime to be committed. I think it fits into that category.
For example, many financial companies bend over backwards to try and prevent business activities from occurring over unapproved communication channels. Basically the SEC forces them to monitor all business activities, and if the company doesn’t at least try to do things like block personal email web sites, log text messages to clients on personal phones, etc., the company can be fined for not trying hard enough. Even though all the things meant to block or monitor can be easily bypassed.
I personally can’t decide if it’s the right thing to do in face of insolvable problems, or a stupid waste of time and resources. Probably a bit of both.
Pharmacist here. I can’t really agree with that take. We have shared liability, in large part because the doctor is super good at diagnosis, and relatively good at what to prescribe for it, and a pharmacist is not good at all at diagnosis, but is trained specifically on medications and interactions.
A doctor should not be prescribing something harmful for you, but it happens, and the pharmacist catches it and calls and gets it straightened out. That’s a normal situation, but opioids are a bit different.
The doctors were overprescibing, but we always were allowed to refuse prescriptions. If it was questionable, we can always call and document our conversation with the doctor. I’ve never heard of a pharmacist getting in trouble if they actually called and verified the MD did truly want that much medication, after being specifically warned of the risks.
If the pharmacists did that call for all of these, then I’m with you it’s the doctors’ fault. But if they just took in the prescriptions and filled them without checking for safe use, they failed to do their job protecting the patient from harm.
All the Rite Aids around here turned into Walgreens years ago and I guess I just assumed the entire company had been bought. I didn't even realize they were still around until now...
Rite Aid bought out our local pharmacy chain around Seattle (Bartell Drugs) a few years ago and it’s been a steady decline since. One of the two locations near me has closed down, and the one I go to has been more of a nightmare to deal with every time I go. I really need to get everything transferred over to CVS.
Having thought on it some more, I strongly suspect that they bought Bartell Drugs (local to Seattle and the surrounding areas) specifically because the real estate was valuable. Close the store, sell the real estate.
GoodRx is realizing handy since you can use it pretty much anywhere. If you meds are available at costplusdrugs.com then it could be significantly cheaper there. They are mail order only and don’t take insurance but they are often an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE cheaper!!! I have a prescription that’s covered by insurance and it’s still cheaper to get it from coat plus without insurance.
I really need to get everything transferred over to CVS.
Maybe it’s different where you live but here I would simply need to tell my doctor “hey actually I want to use CVS now. Can you send the prescriptions to CVS at the corner of X and Y Street? Thanks”
Then when you get to CVS you’ll need to give them your ID, phone number, signature, etc. and they’ll fill your script and that’s your new pharmacy. You can also use multiple pharmacies (I use Walgreens for one script and Kroger for the rest). If your doctor is disorganized with their notes and sends it to Rite Aid next time, just call CVS and tell them you want to get them transferred and they will call them and handle it for you.
HOWEVER
There is a MASSIVE strike of pharmacy workers across the country now. Mainly CVS and Walgreens but I asked my (local branded) Kroger pharmacy tech yesterday when I picked up a prescription if it’s affecting them and she said yeah they’re short staffed and she’s never seen the pharmacist so busy. So it’s likely to be affecting all pharmacies for the next few weeks as they play catch up.
This is only a couple weeks after 75,000 Kaiser employees went on strike which makes me think it’s an industry-wide issue and we’ll see more issues in the near future. Support your local pharmacy people, if you still have one.
Also
Plugging GoodRx here. If you don’t have drug insurance or your drug isn’t covered, they’re a massively helpful cost-saving company. You just type in the drug name and dose and the pharmacist enters it like regular insurance. They save me a couple hundred each month.
As someone who cannot take a generic for one specific medication, CVS has been my savior. The other pharmacies, for whatever reason, stopped stocking that particular medication a few years ago and will no longer order it. CVS stopped stocking it as well, but some of the locations will order it for you.
On the downside, only some of the locations will order it for you. Many are so busy that they don't answer their phones--ever (city problems). They also frequently try to refill it as a generic which is not the one that I need. So I have to go in person and not have delivery, so that I confirm I'm getting the correct medication every time.
And I’m still salty about Pharmacia getting bought out by Medley and then going under. Why can’t anyone just run a pharmacy without jumping through hoops chasing infinite growth? Pretty soon we’re all gonna be getting our meds from either Walmart or Amazon.
What flabbergasts me is the clear conflict of interest between infinite growth and actual patient care. We really need to take this profit model out of healthcare, the only people it hurts are us. Unions in all healthcare fields are about the only thing that can combat it now without actual legislation imo.
Why can’t anyone just run a pharmacy without jumping through hoops chasing infinite growth?
They can and they do. That would likely be any local, or privately owned pharmacies if there are still any near you. When a company goes public it becomes mandatory that they grow as much and as fast as they. They are now beholden to the board and other shareholders and if they aren’t chasing growth, they can get into big trouble.
It’s completely their decision to go public however, and they go public knowing what they’ll have to do.
Forgive me on the (probably not totally accurate) details but I recall reading about how independent pharmacies get screwed over because insurance companies dictate what medications cost and therefore force these smaller independent pharmacies to sell their drugs at loss much of the time.
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