Back on the 28th of July, I went out on the Internet to my prescription drug mail order site to order some refills of my drugs only to find out that all three of the prescriptions had expired. I simply clicked on a “button” and requested Medco to send a prescription request to my local doctor.
After a couple of days, I received one of the three, the one I needed the least, in the mail and just assumed that the other two would follow shortly. We then left for a week in Lake Tahoe. Upon my return I received a call from my doctor of six years, saying that they needed me to come in for a blood test and checkup. I still had not received the other two prescriptions.
On August 24th I arrived at 9:05 for my scheduled 9:15 appointment. There were only two people in the waiting room. I gave the receptionist my name and signed the log and started to take a seat when she said that she was unable to verify my insurance. I told her that I would know why that would be as nothing had changed in the past 13 years. She requested that I show her my insurance card, which I supplied. She took down the information and I continued to take a seat.
After 15 minutes she called me up to the counter again and told me I had to fill out new paperwork for her to update her files. I scanned it and told her that nothing being requested had changed. She said that I hadn’t been in for 16 months and that I needed to fill it out. I told her again that everything in the computer was up-to-date and told her it was a waste of my time for me to complete it. In large letters I penned “the same” across the form, signed, dated it and handed it back to her. She seemed quite “put off” by this. I returned to my seat.
At 9:50, after watching eight new arrivals enter the waiting area and be called into the “back”, I went to the front desk and asked why I was not being seen. She said she would have to check it out and started pounding away on the keyboard. She said that after the next examining room opened up, that I should be next. I stated that I should have been next after the second person was admitted after I arrived. Five minutes later I was called to the back where a nurse weighed me, took my vitals, led me to an examining room, and told me that the doctor would be right in.
15 minutes later, the doctor entered the room and asked how I was doing. I replied quite bored at having to wait an hour and ten minutes just so he could send me for a blood test. His comment was, “Is that what you are here for?” I replied, “You don’t know, you are the one who refused to renew two of my prescriptions and scheduled me?”
He checked my ears, listened to me breathe in and out and then asked if I had fasted. I told him, “Naturally, that what I was told to do when his office called to remind me of the appointment.” He said he would have his nurse come in and draw my blood and that he would tell them “up front” to renew my prescriptions, and to check with them on the way out.
After another five minutes the nurse came in and drew my blood. When I checked with the front desk about my prescriptions, I was handed paperwork to take to a pharmacy. I told her that I always get them filled by mail order and that they should already have the request that was sent from the mail order pharmacy two weeks ago. She said she couldn’t find it, but said she would fax them to Medco. I asked specifically if it would be done today, noting that two of them had already run out. She said it would.
Two days later, I checked online with Medco and found out that the prescriptions had never been sent. The next morning, now Thursday, I called the doctors office and told them that they had yet to renew my prescriptions. Someone looked it up on the computer and said that they would do it right away. I noted that I have now been without two of these prescriptions nearly weeks and that this was supposed to have been done on Monday. She said she would make sure it went out today.
When I checked the site today, it said that the order had been received, but that the estimated ship date was September 2nd. With a three-day mail time that means I might get them by the 5th of September – No, wait, we are only getting mail delivered 5 days a week now due to cutbacks in postal service, and that’s also Labor Day weekend. That means I probably will not get them until September 7th. ONLY 42 days after I first requested them!
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