Rich_in_Tampa said:
I have seen the VA system from the inside. It's complicated: you can get state-of-the-art care or substandard care at the same hospital on the same day, and customer service is equally unpredictable.
I'm starting to get a bit jaundiced about the pharmacy system, too.
Let's take a fairly innocuous, routine, non-rocket-science not-death-defying situation. Our kid's dermatologist prescribes several acne ointments with refills. We could go to Long's Drugs, hand over the paper, shop for 20 minutes, and pay $3-$18 for each fill.
Last week we went to Makalapa Clinic and took a number. There are four prescription windows and a priority system labeled A-D. Five or six "A"s, several "B"s, and a couple "C"s are served for every "D". (You can guess which ticket I was holding, but that's entirely appropriate for us retirees and I'm not whining.) Filling the prescription took 90 minutes. Several of those "A"s, active duty on their lunch hour, waited over 30 minutes. But it's free!
First rant: If banks can transfer gazillions of dollars electronically with minimal fraud or leakage, then why are doctors still writing prescriptions on paper pads? Give 'em a pharmacy's secure website with a login & password and have them do it electronically! And heaven forbid the prescription should be filled and waiting for my pickup before I haul my butt out of the doctor's office and stroll over to the pharmacy. Even refills that were phoned in and ready for pickup had to be handled by a "C" ticket.
Second rant: HIPAA has gone too far. When my kid turns 16 I need her permission (and several forms of evidence) to persuade the pharmacy that I'm authorized to pick up her prescriptions for her. Hey, we're not talking abortions or BCPs here-- just a common antibiotic or a cosmetic ointment. At least she'll be able to drive her own butt down there.
Third rant: Administrative rules are too complicated and detract from the pharmacist's primary missions-- safety & customer service. The pharmacy staff lectured me on my ignorance for trying to pick up our 14-year-old's prescription without her permission. It took the pharmacy staff two tries to locate the proper paperwork and to then explain why the paperwork said "16" when they thought the rule was "14". I hope they get better training on the safety rules, and I hope the safety rules don't change as often as the administrative requirements.
Fourth rant for you veterans: Makalapa Clinic had an O-5 checking the work of the pharmacists. They literally had to enter all the data , fill the prescription, scan their personal bar code, and then call the O-5 over to get his concurrence and his own scanned barcode. I was afraid to ask who screwed up badly enough to be punished like that-- the pharmacists or the O-5? Or the customer who had to wait 10 minutes for the O-5 to work through the approval backlog?
BTW the pharmacists scan their personal barcodes from an sticky label attached to the back of their hands. It's only a matter of time before BUMED & BUPERS tattoo the barcodes somewhere, and then a personnel assignment officer is going to say "Hey, admiral, that sounds like a great idea for the rest of the Navy!"
I'm aware that I come across in this as a grumpy vet with a chip on his shoulder, but I believe that these issues are common to all pharmacies-- even if they're actually run for a profit and not just for service to the fleet.
All things considered I think I'll fill our next few prescriptions at Long's. Next time I'm too likely to end up in Makalapa's anger-management classes-- or their psych ward.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
The hospital misinterpreted HIPAA.
