One of my older patients came in to tell me that her doctor gave her a free new blood glucose meter to replace her old one. She only had a few test strips left, and the doctor did not give her new prescriptions for test strips or lancets. She did not know which meter the doctor gave her, but i can forgive 80+ year old patients for not knowing, figuring the doc would have documented this in her chart. She has Medicare, so I fax the doc's office requesting they mail us prescriptions with the name of the test strips and lancets, testing frequency, diagnosis code, etc.
A few days have passed, and I still haven't received anything. I call the doc's office again repeating everything I sent in the fax including how I need the rx's mailed, and 30 minutes later I receive... a fax. Test strips for an old meter (aka NOT the meter she received in the office). I call the office and finally work through the phone tree until I get to speak with a nurse, and I ask if they can pull the patient's chart to verify what meter THEY gave her (you know, that documentation thing that pharmacists talk about all the time), because I know the one they faxed over was wrong. She pulls the chart, and says there's no mention of a new meter.
Me: "It's not documented? Can you check with the doctor to figure out what meter your office gave her?"
Nurse with attitude: "I don't have time to do that. Why don't you call the patient to figure out what she got, then call me back and let me know" *click*
Woah. That's low. I'm going out of my way to take care of something that you should have done before the patient even walked out of your office, and you have the nerve to assume that I sit on my ass all day and have the time to take care of your problems? What makes you think that I'm not busy in the pharmacy? In addition to taking care of problem scripts like these, I still have ten people waiting in the store for scripts. And then you hang up on me?
I'm sorry, but I get enough crap from patients, I don't need it from doctors offices too. Some patients don't know better, but you do. If you dropped the attitude and didn't hang up on me, I would probably be willing to help.
I consider myself to be someone who goes out of my way for others, but this was unacceptable. I called the office back to let them know I did not appreciate the way I was treated by this nurse, and sure enough, 30 minutes later, I received faxes for the correct test strips. It still took another week to receive hard copies of these scripts for Medicare, but I still felt like this was a victory.
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