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Monday, January 31, 2022

I Don't Wanna Hold Your Hand II

CPP: I enjoyed yesterday's post. 
CP: It's amazing how much hand holding we have to do today. 
CPP: I have one phor you. 
CP: Let's have it. 
CPP: You know how we know people who don't understand checking accounts?
CP: Like the one woman who believed, as long as she had checks in the checkbook, she could keep writing checks, regardless of if there actually was money in the account?
CPP: Yes. You'll enjoy this one. 

Dependent On Insulin: Why am I out of insulin?
CPP: You used it all. 
DOI: But I still have tips left. 
CPP: Okay. The tips are used to administer the insulin. They are the tube that gets it from the insulin pen into your skin. 
DOI: That's not how it works. 
CPP: Yes. It most certainly is. 
DOI: No. The insulin is in the tip. It's always been in the tip. 
CPP: Then why do you keep the insulin box in the fridge and the box of tips on the counter?
DOI: I use the PODS now. 
CPP: Okay. The PODS. You mean the ones that you inject your insulin into prior to sticking the PODS on your skin?
DOI: Yes. 
CPP: Okay. Depending on how much insulin you calculate you need, PODS and the insulin may not finish together. 
CP: Just like most couples. 
CPP: <shh>
DOI: I still have PODS left but no insulin! You shorted me somewhere. Where is my insulin?
CPP: In the box. If you've been using insulin pens this many years, and now switched to the PODS, how did you think the insulin was in the pen tips and not the box labeled insulin?
DOI: That's the part that goes into my skin. The pen doesn't go into my skin. 
CPP: The ink of a pen is not in the tip either. It is literally "just the tip". 
DOI: That makes no sense.

CP: I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it phor you. 
CPP: That's like explaining how a straw works. 
CP: Yeah. The glass is just there for visual aesthetics. The milkshake is in the straw.

I Don't Wanna Hold Your Hand

Upcoming Pharmacy Student: School is hard. 
CP: But worth it. 
UPS (Pronounced OOPS): What's harder?
CP: Adulting. 
UPS: I can only imagine. 
CP: Can you order a pizza? 
UPS: Pshaw. Duh. 
CP: Can you pick it up?
UPS: Natch. 
CP: Can you brush your teeth and make yourself study and pay your bills and set an alarm to get to class and work on time? 
UPS: Uh-huh. Why the interrogation? 
CP: Adulting is hard. 
UPS: How do you mean?
CP: I've been at this a while and I don't believe I have had to hold patients' hands to the extent now required of me. 
CPP: This is where CP pulls out a vignette, a tale phrom recent history to show you how this relates. A little Aesop-esque without the phulphilling phable phinish. 
UPS: Oh. A lesson.
CP: I'll take it phrom here. 
 
Rude Ass Bitch Is Demeaning: I need my medications. 
CP: Doesn't everybody? 
RABID: I'm more important. 
CP: Of course you are. They are out for delivery. 
RABID: They were supposed to be here yesterday. 
CP: There was this huge storm? Maybe you heard about it on the news? Or felt it in the air? Or saw it with your eyes as you passed a window?
RABID: Yeah? So?
CP: So we couldn't deliver anything yesterday. In fact, we only had half staff to phill prescriptions yesterday as well. 
RABID: I need my stuff. 
CP: We have been trying to catch up on yesterday's deliveries as well as making today's. Our drivers have the deliveries, it's just taking them longer. They will be there. 
RABID: That's not my problem. 
CP: It appears that it is. Our drivers can only deliver as quickly as the roads allow them. 
RABID: I need my medications. 
CP: So does everyone else. Despite what your momma told you, you're not special. You're unique, just like everyone else though. If you'd like to help, you are always welcome to receive your prescriptions the old fashioned way. 
RABID: How's that? 
CP: Drive to the pharmacy and pick them up yourself. 
RABID: I can't drive. The roads are too bad. 

CPP: I remember the good old days. Back in the late teens. 
UPS: 19-teens?
CPP: Smart ass. Twenty-teens. Way back then, there was no curbside service and limited delivery. People had to get in their cars and drive to leave their houses. They had to forage the aisles and restaurants for their own groceries and meals. 
UPS: The horror. The horror!
CP: Now they can request grocery deliveries, meal deliveries, and pet food and prescription deliveries from their couches. With all of life's current conveniences, the only thing they can't get delivered is something to complain about. 
CPP: So they call everyone to bitch their conveniences aren't convenient enough. 
UPS: She really bitched that much? 
CP: She called every 42 minutes for nearly 7 hours until, we assume, she either received her delivery, her phone died because no one was available to plug it in phor her, or she died. 
CPP: Either way, everyone was satisfied. 

Stupid Is. . .

CPP What's one of our favourite sayings about people?
CPP: Never ask "How dumb can people be? They'll take it as a challenge". 
CP: Right.  
CPP: Why do you ask? 
CP: I have a new loathing for insurance companies. 
CPP: Do we need another reason to abhor, detest, execrate, despise them?
CP: Very vehemently vilified, verily. And yes. Yes we do. 
CPP: What did they do now?
CP: Ask us to commit insurance fraud. 
CPP: The insurance company?
CP: Yes. 
CPP: ASKED us to commit insurance fraud?
CP: Yes. 
CPP: However did this take place? 

CP: CP's Paradise where we'll do anything phor prescriptions but we won't do that. How may I help you?
Actively Seeking Insurance Fraud: I have a mutual patient of ours on the line who would like to get credit for his prescription. 
CP: You don't have to say "of ours". 
AS IF: What?
CP: You don't have to say "of ours" as in "mutual patient OF OURS". That's redundant. Like 6am in the morning. 
AS IF: Um. He'd like credit on his prescription. 
CP: Ok. Which involves what on my end?
AS IF: We need you to rerun his claim. It wasn't covered and he paid cash for it. We have since approved the claim so you need to reverse it and run it for a paid claim. 
CP: That all sounds like a good plan. When did he pay cash?
AS IF: Last Friday.
CP: Uh-huh. And when did you approve the prior authorisation? 
AS IF: Today. 
CP: Today being Thursday, 6 days later?
AS IF: Correct. 
CP: And, just to satisfy my own curiosity and perform my own due diligence, did you happen to backdate the claim to last Friday? The day he actually received the medication?
AS IF: No. 
CP: I see. Can you do that?
AS IF: No. The prior auth was approved today. 
CP: But you're the insurance company. You're supposed to do insurance-y things. I only do pharmacy-y things on my end. 
AS IF: No. We just need you to reverse it and rebill it so he can get a refund. 
CP: I cannot. I filled it on Friday. Today is Thursday. 
AS IF: You could change the date to today?
CP: I CAN!!!!???? Wow. Why didn't I think of that first!?
AS IF: I know. It's pretty easy. Happy to help.
CP: Except that's insurance fraud which legal people define as: "... any duplicitous act performed with the intent to obtain an improper payment from an insurer." You're asking me to change a fill date to satisfy your obligation to your patient. Since you, the insurance, wrote the contract, and determined this medication needed prior auth and have the power you granted yourself to change the fill date (called backdating), would it not be in your patient's best interest to do all of this yourself? And then, maybe, cut your own beneficiary a check directly from your own company? I'm sure the patient would appreciate this approach without unnecessarily involving other parties who, let's face it, don't really need to be part of addressing the problem you created. In fact, I don't think you need me anymore. I can give you the phone number to the patient's insurance for you to call for help if you like.
AS IF: No. I think I have it. 
CP: Good. Hope it works. If not, it's on the back of the patient's card. Good luck and go fraud yourself!

CPP: Damn. 
CP: Right? They wanted me to go fraud myself! 
CPP: To which you said Fraud That!
CP: Fraud off!
CPP: That's enough. People will question our sanity. 

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Relax, Don't Do It

ME: People need to learn self-control. 
MICE ELF: Like people taking too many selfies? 
ME: Or finishing off the cheesecake?
MICE ELF: Shut it. 
CP: How about NOT calling the pharmacy?
ME: Like ever? 
CP: It would be a good start. I mentioned the other week about how we need to limit the number of calls a person's phone can make to a business; or how many our phone can accept from a number. 
MICE ELF: Like The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
CP: Sure. If the Phable Phits, Pharmacise it. 
ME: Enlighten us with your real world example, O Wise One. 
MICE ELF: Cuz we both know you have one. 
ME: You are never short on stories. 
MICE ELF: Short . . . stories?  
ME: <shrugs>

CP: Once upon a midnight dreary. 
CPP: It was day. 
CP: Phine. Day. 
 
Uber-Tech: CP's Paradise Lost Pharmacy, How may I help you?
Overly Harassing Everyone Like Literally No One's Safe: When will my medication be delivered? 
UT: Later today. Sometime between noon and 6pm.  
O HELL NO's: Can you be more specific?
UT: No.
 
<1 hr later>
Poor Intern: CP's Lost Paradise Pill Parade. How may I help you?
O HELL NO's: I need my medication. When will it be delivered?
PI: Still sometime between noon and 6pm.
O HELL NO's: Can you do better than that? 
PI: 3:14. 
O HELL NO's: Really?
PI: No. But it could be, seeing as how that is between noon and 6pm. We are short a driver and the storms have backed us up this week.
O HELL NO's: Well that's not my phault. 
PI: Whose fault? Whose but his own?

<Later> 
CPP: CP's Lost. May I help you?
O HELL NO's: When will my prescriptions be delivered?
CPP: Later. 
O HELL NO's: How much later?
CPP: Well my tech told you between noon and 6pm as did my Intern. I'm going to have to reiterate what they said. 
O HELL NO's: Not good enough!

<More Latererer>
CP: CP's <checks caller ID> Hell, How may I help you?
O HELL NO's: When will you deliver?
CP: We cannot provide exact times. 
O HELL NO's: Well I need it. 
CP: You don't want it? You just need it? To breathe, to feel, to know you're alive?
O HELL NO's: Yes!
CP: You could just <plays triangle> COME AND GET IT! 
O HELL NO's: It's snowing! I can't come out in this!
CP: Think of my drivers. Now I need you to stop harassing us.  
O HELL NO's: I'm not! I need my medication!
CP: Let me ask you this: Do you use the online tracking for FedEx, UPS, or the USPS? 
O HELL NO's: Yes!
CP: What does the tracking show?
O HELL NO's: Where it was last scanned. 
CP: Anything else? 
O HELL NO's: No. 
CP: Your prescription was last scanned here. It's on a truck, en route to your house. Once your Amazon package is on the truck do you call the shipper to ask for an exact delivery time? Do you call the warehouse every hour to harass them? All they did was ship it. Once it leaves the facility the shipper has no control over the route or time to destination. Stop. Calling. Us! 
O HELL NO's: Well this is ridiculous. 
CP: I could not agree more. Imagine the work all of us could have completed if you had listened to us the first time and NOT called us repeatedly. Sometimes, NOT calling is the best solution, like alcohol.
O HELL NO's: You are going to hell.
CP: “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”

#Milton
#InHellIllBeInGoodCompany
#EndTelephonicHarassment
#JustBecauseYouCanCallDoesNotMeanYouShould
#WeHaveMorePatientsThanYou
 

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Delivery That Doesn't Deliver

ME: Name one business practice that pharmacy adopted that revolutionized the profession. 
MICE ELF: Drive-thru. 
ME, MICE ELF, and I: lololololololololol
ME: Seriously. 
MICE ELF: Delivery. 
CP: You would think that. Until you offer it. 
MICE ELF: How do you mean? 
CP: Instead of fixing a number of issues with patients, it creates its own subset. It even makes others worse. 
ME: Well they can't be about compliance. 
MICE ELF: Sure they can. "Stop sending this to me! I have too much already."
CP: Or the driver is on the porch, banging on the door, shouting, whilst calling the patient's phone and finally leaves. Later, the patient calls and says "I don't answer my phone. I don't know who's banging on my door. They should've knocked louder." 
ME: When the message in the patient's profile says "bang loudly on door as patient is deaf and/or playing video games in the basement".
MICE ELF: It's also not as if we didn't call before we left to warn her we would be there between 1pm and 3pm. 
CP: Just today. We texted a patient to let him know our driver had left with his medication. We told him he could expect it within two hours. His response?
MICE ELF: Yeah?
CP: "Do not expect me to be here, I'm not waiting around 2 hours."
ME: To which you replied?
CP: "Guess you'll have to pick them up while you're out and about. Sorry for the CONVENIENCE!" If you can be there for the cable guy, your DoorDash, or anything else that comes to. your. front. door, you can be there for your drugs. 
ME: Or the curbside recently. 
MICE ELF: Sorry. We only have two people here right now. Half our store is out with COVID and our phones are ringing off the hook. We will be out shortly. 
CP: Yeah. She waited in front of our doors, staring at us for 4 minutes, gesticulating wildly. Finally, she stepped out of her car, parked askew on the sidewalk even, slammed her door, stomped into our store and complained about the inconvenience of being 20 feet away yet powerless to get her own medication. 
ME: You got legs? Use them! 
CP: But the delivery people remain the worst. You don't even have to get out of bed to have groceries, meals, medications, weed, alcohol, TV, movies, entertainment delivered to your door yet they are somehow a burden on you; dare I say an inconvenience even? 
MICE ELF: Dare! Dare!
ME: Remember your post from about 7 or 8 years ago? 
MICE ELF: Yeah! The Phuture of Pharmacy! I still love that one. 
CP: I may have to repost soon to see how my predictions have aged. The only service we don't offer, currently, is having someone take your medications for you. Talk about being touchless contact. Maybe I'll update that for later this week. Until then, I guess we just learn all the secret knocks each patient requires as we attempt to place their medications directly into their hands and are met with inexplicable resistance. 
#ResistanceIsFutile 
#Assimilate


Friday, January 7, 2022

You're Not (More) Important

CP: Welcome and Good Morning to ya!
Throwing Wild Ass Tantrum: I need these filled. 
CP: Good on you. We like to fill things. 
TWAT: How long is the wait?
CP: Currently, the wait time in your area is 29 minutes. 
TWAT: I just left the dentist. I'm in pain!
CP: I just opened and we have many people already ahead of you for their prescriptions and shots. We are a very popular location with people with all sorts of needs these past couple years. 
TWAT: But I'm standing right here!
CP: And she's sitting over there, he's kneeling over there and, for some reason, she's squatting in the corner. You're saying standing > sitting > kneeling > squatting?
TWAT: But I'm in pain. 
CP: Aha. I just met you and, this is crazy, but do you want to go to Olive Garden or Outback with my this Friday, around 6pm, maybe?
TWAT: WTF?
CP: Well, every time I go out to eat on a Friday, to really popular casual dining locations around 6pm, I am always told the wait time is around 2 hours. I was hoping that your powers of persuasion and sense of entitlement might get me a seat faster. When they tell me it's 2 hours until I can eat, you can stomp your foot at them and shout "BUT I'M HUNGRY!" Since you think that works here, I figured I'd try to cash in on your abilities. 
TWAT: This is ridiculous. 
CP: Maybe if you ask all of the people ahead of you if they really need their medications right now, they may all let you go ahead of them. We could try that at the restaurant tonight too; "Hi, I believe you're not as hungry as I am. May I go ahead of all of you?". I'd love to actually watch that. What do you say?
TWAT: I'll be back. 
CP: See you in 31 minutes. 
TWAT: You told me 29 minutes!
CP: I did. But you wasted time and now more people have jumped the queue since you hesitated on handing me your prescriptions. . . for Motrin. You could just buy this OTC. 
TWAT: Nope. I'm not paying for this. 
CP: Definitely taking you to Outback.
 
ME: One of these days, someone will be nice to us. 
MICE ELF: Despite there being nearly 8 billion people on the planet, it amazes me how many believe they are more important than anyone else. 
CP: "I'm just a pharmacist, standing here, in phront of a patient, asking him not to be a douche."

#NottingHill
#DontBeADouche

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Pick Up!

CP: Welcome to CP's Parade of Pills. How may I help you?
Angry Little Man Sneering: PICK UP
CP: Whoa. Tone it down a bit. I'm a pharmacist; not deaph. 
ALMS: PICK UP. 
CP: I can tell this is going to end well. What's thy name, peasant?
ALMS: Poor. Richard Poor. 
ME: Really? You're going with Poor Dick? 
CP: Shut it. 
ALMS: I called it in 3 hours ago. 
CP: Ok. Let me enter your name in the computer. 
ALMS: It was supposed to be ready when I got here. 
CP: And I just typed your name to verify what you are here to retrieve. What's your DOB?
ALMS: 5/5/75. It's for my Viagra. It was supposed to be here. 
CP: You telling me all of these unhelpful things is really making my computer search faster. I truly appreciate it. Perhaps you could remain silent until I ask you more questions. 
ALMS: I don't see why this is taking so long. 
CP: Because you haven't stopped jabbering since you walked in. I have to get your name and DOB. Then I have to enter them into the system. Then the computer tells me which bin has your prescription(s). Then I retrieve it. The time you called it in and what it is matter not. It does however annoy me because you sound annoyed that I didn't just walk up and pull it from my ass. Like, somehow, you saying "I called it in 3 hours ago" with your little, loud, annoyed tone is going to expedite the work I have to do to sell it to you. 
ALMS: This is ridiculous. 
CP: I agree. Perhaps in the phuture you can speak when spoken to and answer only the questions I ask. You'd make a terrible witness on the stand. You'd incriminate yourself right away when they only asked your name.
"Please state your name."
"Dick Poor. I called in my Viagra 3 hours ago and the pharmacist didn't just hand it to me so I kept yelling at her and threatening her and then I tried to jump the counter and that's when she did a spin kick and knocked me backwards and then hog tied me and held her Katana Spatula 6000 to my throat until the cops showed up to save me."
MICE ELF: That's great. Acting annoyed when you just started typing because they think you're taking too long is similar to them pointing behind you and saying "it's there on the shelf. that's mine right there. just grab it". 
ME: And it's always someone else's prescription.
MICE ELF: Don't tell me how to do my job when you don't even have one. 
CP: Hey, they're just doing their own research and are trying to be helpful as you do yours. 
 
#PharmacyPhuckers