Why Your Prescription Takes So Damn Long To Fill

" .... I call your doctors office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a... Read more

" .... I call your doctors office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk, who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we've ever filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that "for you" means "for your cousin" and you answer my question with a "yes", whereupon I go the computer and see you are not on file.The phone rings..." That's part of the reason why your prescription takes so long to fill, and after almost 20 years of this, a question I was never quite able to answer loomed larger and larger each day:"Why did I get into this profession?"Cranky customers whose only questions seem to involve their insurance co-pays. Pointless paperwork. People begging for early narcotic refills. Staff cuts. That was my workday. The struggle to get people the medicine and information they needed seemed almost futile at times.Then one day I got the answer. It hit me like a ton of bricks while driving home one spring evening along the California coast. I was born again, but it had nothing to do with Jesus.It did have a lot to do with a little plastic motorcycle. And I did become the pharmacist who saved Christmas.I absolutely know now why I became a pharmacist.I still don't know why your co-pay is so high. Less