Since when does a pharmacist get to play judge, jury and doctor? My recent experience at a Buckhead Walgreens has left my blood boiling.
My husband is a chronic pain patient, who has been on carefully-monitored narcotic pain medication for over 20 years. Many of those prescriptions have been filled at a local Walgreens.
It so happens that my local pharmacy that I usually rely on for one of these medications told me on Friday that they hadn't yet ordered it, and so it would likely not be ready when my husband needed it on Tuesday. This news left me scrambling all weekend to find another pharmacy that would carry it.
I finally found a Walgreens, which was located about 30 minutes away from my house by car. I drove the prescription down. When I got there, I was informed by the extremely rude pharmacist that he would have to verify the prescription with the doctor's office.
"No problem", I shrugged, "they open at 8 AM on Monday. I'll call you around noon to make sure everything is okay and will come down on my lunch hour to pick it up.
"Well..." he hesitated. "Looking at the doctor who prescribed this, his office sometimes doesn't give us the information we need".
"Like what kind of information", I asked. This was new to me.
"We need to know the diagnosis". He said.
"Well, that's weird", I said, "but I will call them in the morning and let them know they need to provide that".
I then left, fully confident that this would be resolved on Monday morning.
Cut to this morning. I first called the doctor's office, and they assured me that all would be fine when the pharmacy called. I then called the pharmacist and let him know that the office was expecting his call.
About 30 minutes lated he called back. "Um, I can't fill this prescription", he said. "The diagnosis they provided wasn't an acceptable one".
"Well what diagnosis did they provide"? I asked, incredulous.
"Suffice it to say, it wasn't acceptable", he said. "You should come get your prescription".
At this point, I wanted to scream at him, but he still held my husband's prescription. I would wait until I had it back in my hand and then give him a piece of my mind.
As of press time, I still don't have a source that will fill the medication. So my husband will likely have some kind of withdrawal symptoms because this guy was a complete judgmental moron.
The crazy thing is, I had some things I needed to buy in the store, but now I would rather go out of my way to another store than to spend a penny at Walgreens!
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