Health care annoyances

[fbhjr]

I take a bunch of medications regularly.
Some pills for blood pressure, some for sugar levels, some for digestion and eye drops for my vision issues.
I’ve been taking all of these for years. All of them since before Covid, some much before.
The pharmacy I use has them all on regular refill schedules I get texts from them when it’s time to go pick up more.
Often when I go on longer trips I’ve got to encourage them to get some before I go, but I’ve always been able to.

I was happy this trip to find I had enough of everything to get through and would just need one more when I got back.
Saturday when we landed, I sent in the request for that one and they assured me they’d have it long before I took my last pill Thursday, but they just had to confirm with my doctor first.

Monday as I drove home I got a text from them saying “your doctor said no, so we aren’t going to refill it”.
I had seen my doctor only six weeks ago and she was very clear not to make changes to my meds, so this confused me.
I called the pharmacy and they said “If the doctor says no to a renewal, we can’t give it to you.”
OK, I get that.

The next morning I called the doctor’s office and, speaking with the receptionist who would not forward me to anyone, they said “we don’t prescribe that to you.”
“Yes, you’ve had me taking that since 2018.”
“No, not us.”
“Yes, you.”
“It’s not in our records.”
“I discussed it with my doctor in June and she said keep taking it.”
“That must not have been us.”

My doctor’s office has made it impossible to reach her by phone. You can call the office, but you get the receptionist who will not put people through in any case or take messages.
You have to use their very poor web interface for any communication.
You can not reply to any messages from the doctor more than a week old, and to initiate a new message to her I have to go through a while list of “I’ve got a medical question, not it’s not in your FAQ, yes it is important, no I shouldn’t go to an ER, yes I need an answer” pages to get to where you can actually send them message.
But, I did.

The next day I got a reply from my doctor’s nurse.
“When you went to the diabetes center this spring, they took over your medications, so they have to renew it,” she told me.
“No. That’s not what happened. When I was there they said ‘everything you take seems to be working well, so keep going’ and offered to renew the one that was about to run out, but did not say anything about take over my medications.”
“We prefer specialists to give medications, so they took it all over.”
“If they took over my medications, why didn’t they take over both my blood sugar ones?”
“What?”
“They renewed one your office had prescribed, but didn’t touch the other. If they were taking over my medications, why didn’t they do it all?”
“That is strange.”
“And, shouldn’t my primary care doctor at least have visibility to all my medications? When I called they claimed I had never taken it, despite you prescribing it to me for seven years.”
“That’s not right.”
“That leaves the question of how to I get my medications?”
“They’ll have to prescribe it.”
“The nurse I spent 10 minutes with 3 months ago is now in charge of giving me half of my prescriptions, not the doctor I have seen regularly for years, and my doctor won’t have any records of that?”
“That isn’t how it should work…”
“I have two days of medications left. Please work this out before I run out.”

About an hour later I got a call from the diabetes center saying they’d do both my medications from now on and they’d be ready later that day. And, they’re set up for the next year.
And, all of them now show up on my records.

I’m amazed anyone can get through this system. It’s just stupid.
If I wasn’t willing to pick an argument with my health care provider, I would have stopped getting a medication that all the evidence says works for me.
Because some nurse tried to be helpful and said “this pill runs out soon, I’ll just push renew for you” and the whole system just assumed she was forever going to be in charge of that.
I don’t blame her, but the rest of the system is moronic.

Comments

[msmidge]

That's incredibly inefficient and disrespectful to patients.

[justphoenix]

Sorry you had to deal with that! So frustrating.

[meowmensteen]

Sounds about par for the course. I feel like Kafka's "The Castle" very accurately describes America's healthcare system.

[fbhjr]

Yeah, but I don’t think it should be what they use as their process model…

[threemeninaboat]

Gaaa we do that allll the time. We refill almost anything that isn't an opiate because the patient is in our care until we hand them back to the PCP. They failed to take your care back.

[palusbuteo]

GRRRRR.

I'm glad the insurance I have, UMass, has MyChart online and that I've started using that the last 2 years.
There is a way to contact my PCP directly and all of their notes and prescriptions and such are all supposed to be uploaded and accessible there and I can read and download them.

The UI is a little wonky but it "works"

although I did just put in a refill on the new meds I'm on for the gout. I haven't heard anything about that yet.
My PCP when I was on the phone with him yesterday said "call in a refill by the end of this week I'll push it through so you'll have the meds on hand for the next flare up, whenever that happens"

But, nothing from the pharmacy or anything. Yet.

I made the mistake of signing up for their Text Notifications and get a text from them seemingly every day. Even for appointments I won't be at until October. But I guess it's "easy" to check you've read it.

Meanwhile, the other health insurance that's merged with Umass has decided to change my PCP without my consent or notice three times this year.
My PCP office called ME, 2 days before my recent appointment with him, asking why I changed PCP's at the last minute.

I informed them that I did not.
They said Tufts did it.
News to me. Again.
For some reason I wasn't on hold for 3 hours and got someone right away and got the matter cleared up in a few moments.
I did tell them I was greatly annoyed that I was switched without anyone's consent, or permission, let alone my own.
They didn't have an answer as to why.

Although my most recent call to both insurances for the dental coverage I was on hold or sent to la la land for an hour or so.
I gave up.
I couldn't even press 1 to leave a callback number. It wouldn't let me.


And what really pisses me off the most about all of this, is that this is being done on purpose.
They want to make us suffer.

And worse still, it's becoming more politicized by the day.

[fbhjr]

Yeah, this is through the MyChart interface too…

[palusbuteo]

Aww jeez. :(

[brickhousewench]

I don't understand how your doctor could have lost all records of what they've been prescribing you for years.

W.the ever loving F?!?!?

[fbhjr]

It seems like it wasn’t actually removed, but put under the heading of this other office. But, I couldn’t see it from my log on, and I guess the regular staff couldn’t without knowing to go look for it.
So, at least they weren’t erased, just moved to the equivalent of another drive I didn’t have privileges for.

[brickhousewench]

Still, crazy that they just assumed that you wanted to transfer all your prescriptions to a different provider like that.