Bartell Drugs (aka Bart HELL drugs) , our local pharmacy, is a disaster. Between us we've had to go there several times over the last couple of weeks.... G for new supplies of Insulin, me for some migraine medication, and twice for different antibiotics for Harry. Each and every time has been a bloody awful experience.
They have a drive-thru section where you pull up to the window, drop off a prescription and then later you can drive up to the window and pick up said prescription. They also have a queue inside, and they have 1 person working at distributing all these medications. This means that no matter which you do (walk or drive) you have to wait for a minimum of half an hour. Obviously the lesser of two evils is to wait in the car but you then get frustrated by them serving people who joined the walk in queue long after you drove up.... or someone in the car infront of you always having 1091820398 prescriptions filled and taking forever.
G went last week for some refills on his test strips ... fairly key things to keeping him alive and healthy. He'd been given a repeat prescription from the DR a couple of months ago and phoned through for some more. He went to pick them up from the drive-thru queue (half an hour) and when he got them home he realised they were the wrong ones and didn't work in his meter. He went back down to the pharmacy and this time went in, queued for half an hour, only to be told by the useless female behind the counter that his prescription said the ones she'd given him and that was tough.
He came home concerned and determined to call the Endocrinologist the following morning. Half an hour later the pharmacist rang to say that he'd been worried and looked through the old prescriptions and discovered that they had been mistaken, so G went back for a 3rd time to pick up the correct test strips.
A few days later I called them and asked them to get me a new prescription for migraine medication from the Doc. Someone had told me this wonderful thing in the US is that you can ring the pharmacy and they then fax the Doc, ask for prescription, get fax back, and then go and pick it up. Sounds wondefully simple doesn't it? Saves a trip to the Doc? Ha. Would have been far easier to go to the doc considering it took me 10 phone calls, multiple times of them 'forgetting' to fax the Doc and having to chase it, and finally a half an hour wait to get the damn things.
Harry got given antibiotics last week. I had to go in, because I'd not gotten a prescription for him before there and I had to do some paperwork. I had to wait in the line for ..... ooh 45 mins with him feeling poorly and upset before I could get out of there. Half an hour, they told me. I had G go and pick it up on his way home from work (2 hrs later) ... he then ended up sitting in the drive through queue for 45 mins only to find they'd not made the damn thing and then sit there for another 30 mins while they did.
This week Harry got given more antibiotics as the first lot haven't worked and he's poorly again. I drove through and dropped off the prescription yesterday (30 mins) and was told that it'd be ready in 30 mins. Once again I asked Gareth to pick it up on the way home (3 hrs later). He , once again, sat in the drive through queue for 45 mins and it wasn't ready. They went off to make it leaving him sitting there for another 20 minutes, and handed it to him. When he got it home we discovered that they'd completely mislabelled it and put the wrong doseage on it. The Doc had said 5 ml twice a day, they'd written 4ml and put a confusing 'NEEDS MIXING' instruction on the bottle which was actually something they had to do there, not us at home!
Fuckwits. If there was another option closer to home I'd go in a flash - bit scary that these people are handing out life altering medication.
Posted by katie at February 1, 2006 01:29 PM