Pharmacy Shmarmacy

So, let's see if I can pick up where I left off last night. We never did get Ethan's medicine. Walgreens INSISTS that our doctor's office never called in the prescription. We talked to several different staff personnel at the pharmacy last night and all of them checked for us and said that they had nothing, but they would all tell us that there were still unanswered voicemail messages and to check back in 30 minutes. We got this several times and continued to call back every 30 minutes until well after 9pm. Finally, we were told that they had NOTHING for our son that was called in. So at that point, I was starting to think that our doctor's office is the one that dropped the ball here. Knowing that the pharmacy was only open for one more hour at that point, I even tried one last ditch effort to fix the situation. I called the answering service for our pediatrician's office and asked who was on call. If it had been our doctor that was on call, then I would have insisted that he be paged to call me immediately so I could inform him of what happened and have him call the pharmacy to call in the script. Well, our ped was not the one on call and so I let it go because any other doctor would not be aware of the situation. Basically, there was nothing I could do last night. I just had to go to bed knowing that my child had to go another 12 hours before he could get the right medication to treat his pneumonia.

So, now fast forward to this morning. I showed up to the doctor's office thinking that they must not have called in the presciption. But giving them the benefit of the doubt, I walked into the office calm and asked the receptionist if there was a prescription at the front desk waiting for me. I thought that there could have been a miscommunication in some way because they were supposed to leave x-ray orders for me up there to have a repeat x-ray done for Ethan on Monday and maybe the nurse got confused. The receptionist looked for me and said there was nothing and asked me what it was supposed to be. I was starting to get upset by this point and I explained about how the nurse called me yesterday evening saying that Ethan had pneumonia and that an antibiotic was supposed to be called in for us, but one was never called in. I said that since one never got called in then I figured she must have left something up here for me to pick up since my son needs to start this medicine as soon as possible. The receptionist had a look of shock on her face and said, "It never got called in?" I said, "No, and I'm very upset about it, too." She quickly walked in the back and got the nurse. After several minutes, the nurse walked out and said that the prescription DID get called in at 5:05pm yesterday. She showed me the paper where it was documented. This means that the pharmacy IS the one that dropped the ball after all. And honestly, it doesn't surprise us because we have had a few more issues lately with Walgreens and mistakes they have made. The nurse gave me a copy of the form where she had it documented that she called in the prescription and also gave me a new one to take and get filled elsewhere.

I immediately went to CVS Pharmacy, which will be our new home now, and got set up with them. I got Ethan's medicine in no time at all and am glad that he was finally able to start taking it. Then it was time to go face Walgreens. I went in and saw the pharmacy manager. I explained in detail about what happened last night. I was proud of myself for staying so calm. The part that was so upsetting to me was how put off we were when we called to check on it, especially by the man who told me that it didn't matter who he prescription was for or what it was, but that if it wasn't called in by 8pm then it wasn't getting filled last night because there was a 2hr wait and they closed at 10pm. I explained to the manager that I was calling about a 6 year old child that when any of the staff looked it up on the computer, they would see that he takes Pulmicort, Atrovent, and Xopenex, all lung medications, on a regular basis. Also, they would see that just last week he had a prescription filled for Orapred and this week for Zithromax. It would be very obvious that my six year old child with lung problems has been sick and is now calling about Augmentin for pneumonia. To now know that my doctor DID in fact call in my child's medicine and to know that their staff LOST the information does not sit well with me. And to know that they would not do more to look for the prescription when I kept insisting that it had been called in, especially knowing the medical history of the patient, does not sit well with me either. You could tell by the look on the manager's face that he knew they dropped the ball. He kept apologizing and said that he wished he could do something to make it up to me. I said that the only thing he could do was to handle this situation and to make sure that this never happened again to somebody else. He assured me that he was definitely going to deal with this with his staff. He thanked me for bringing it to his attention and that was pretty much it. I do understand that mistakes happen, but with this particular pharmacy, this is the third or fourth big mistake in just the past couple of months. Enough is enough!

On a positive note, it is the weekend. My family is all home together. Nobody is running a fever. And I feel like we can get back to normal. I'm looking forward to it!