I'm sure many of you who read this will know the plight of the retail Pharmacist in the state of Florida...or will be one of my "Brothers in Arms" in the trenches here. We're mired in what I can only describe as the worst clusterfuck a Pharmacist could imagine.
I'm sure none of us expected when we went for our 4-6 years of Pharmacy school to become cops.
What I think it totally SCREWED is that the state has actually made it LAW (3 years ago) that we MUST verify that there is a proper patient-physician relationship if the person pays cash or has only controls.
I didn't know that not having insurance made you a suspect...what if you lost your job? What if you can't afford it at your job? What if you're self employed and don't see the benefit of the expense? MILLIONS of Americans are without insurance. Having only controls? That's way suspect as well. But, what if you are otherwise healthy and only have severe pain because you were in a car crash that left you with no cartilage and stretched ligaments in your knee as well as disc problems in your back?
Well, in Florida, in either of those situations, the LAW states that I MUST treat your prescription differently. I must call your MD and question him. What the HELL does that mean? you ask. I have no damn clue! I didn't learn diagnosis in Pharmacy school. What the fuck does "Pharmaceutics" "Professional Practice" or "Pharmacodynamics" teach me about diagnosis? Beats the shit out of me!
I ask the state inspector TODAY what it means to question the Physician, and he gives me the ever helpful answer of "Well, you question him to satisfy your professional judgement" I felt like screaming "What the fuck kind of answer is that? That answered my question with the same words rearranged into a statement!" I am untrained in what these diagnoses mean. Lumbago sounds really official to the lay person until you realize that it is simply "Generalized back pain of an unspecified origin", and you realize it just might be bullshit.
What's worse is that while the state is putting together different "raids" on pain clinics, they're not sharing this information with us Pharmacists so that we can be aware of what Physicians are being naughty fuckups. How are we supposed to avoid the "bad eggs" if you're not telling us which ones are not doing the right thing? Seems rather unfair, when a Pharmacist can be accused of trafficking in narcotics for filling scripts from the wrong MD....even if they are unaware that the MD office isn't being legit.
So, all of this leads to us asking ourselves what do we do? We can fill the prescriptions and hope they're not Pharmaceutical "Hand Grenades", or turn away the business.
Some of my colleagues down here love the idea of catching the bad guys. I say to them "Good luck and God Bless!" Say you do catch some doctor shopper at 10am and he goes to jail. If he's got any kind of loyal friends or attorney, he's bonded out by 5 or 6pm, which is hours before your shift ends. Never mind that his attorney will claim he's an addict and that his "addiction" led to his illegal behavior (It couldn't POSSIBLY be the 24" spinners on his 745Li or his Gucci everything). He'll plead down to simple possession and be back on the streets on probation or after 6 months in the county.
Meanwhile, you get to worry about him and his pals wanting some form of retribution for the inconvenience you caused him. And if he does shoot you in the face for what you did, what does your family get for it? Nothing...unless you have a life insurance policy on yourself.
Cops look at us as drug dealers too, and put us in the same boat as the MD even though we have no diagnostic abilities, and have no clue what's going on inside the room with the patient. How the fuck do I know if the Physician isn't examining patients if someone doesn't TELL me that!
Even our wonderful new Governor doesn't want to help us. He's looking to scuttle the registry that might give us the ability to determine who is shopping till they drop and avoid those patients.
Think your employer will back you if you get in hot water for filling the wrong prescription? Think again...they'll be the first to throw you under the bus and claim they had "No idea he was doing that sort of prescription filling".
I for one am not putting myself or my license at risk....my answer is fully 100% "I don't carry that". No other way to be in an environment where nobody has your back but yourself
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