pharmacy question

Is there some kind of regulation that says pharmacies cannot tell you over the phone whether they have certain medications in stock?

My girlfriend was in the ER last night, and got a scrip for percocet. Obviously she's in a lot of pain.

So this morning, I go to the CVS down the street, which 1. opens nearly a half hour late, and then 2. when they are finally open, tell me they don't have percocets. OK, fuck it, we'll try Safeway. No dice, they are out of it as well. Jesus, what the hell? Is there a run on percocets? That seems to me like running out of fucking aspirin or something.

So I call the other CVS pharmacy that's relatively close, just to find out if a trip there would be a waste of time, and I get, "Sir, we can't give out that information over the phone." "So I have to go all the way down there, just to possibly find out that you don't have the medicine I need?!!!?" "Yes."

:wtf: :mad:

And, their insurance may even say they can't. They are probably trying to stop both robberies/theft and people writing fake scripts for opiates.

I would expect a pharmacy to protect itself from robbery by, like, keeping stuff locked up. And from fake scripts by, I dunno, verifying prescriptions or something. Of course, I would also expect a pharmacy to have common painkillers in stock, and that's obviously too much to ask.

or nearby. When I left the hospital last time they gave me a powerful painkiller and even though it was late at night they said that the Eckards next door had a 24hr pharmacy and usually carried the product.

And she apparently found a pharmacy that had it in stock just now...after walking all over the place, in pain. Really makes me feel like a fantastic boyfriend, that I could help as much as I did, let me tell you. Jeez.

Rent yourself a copy of "Drugstore Cowboy" and you'll know why it is the way it is

I've just been feeling generally useless these days...too many things I can't do a damn thing about.

I do think I'm going to call a couple more pharmacies, though, just for the hell of it, and start asking things like, "So, uhhh, what kind of safe do you use to lock up the drugs?" and "Is there, like, a skylight in the roof of your store at all?" :D

Especially if the doctor's office is closed. Many pill addicts "pharmacy shop," and most usually try it after offices are closed. A friend's partner is a pharmacist, and they only keep "just enough" inventory of controlled substances like this. Thus, they often run out. She gets faked scripts all the time -- and "not quite sure" scripts daily, and even more on weekends.

physically in this case, thanks to drug prohibition laws.

about stock over the phone. It is one of the drugs that addicts knock over pharmacies for.

like if I wanted a certain kind of booze, let's say Maker's Mark, and I called a liquor store to see if they had it, but they refused to tell me over the phone one way or the other. What's the difference? I know liquor stores have liquor, and drug stores have drugs. If I was going to knock over a drug or a liquor store, I'd probably pick my target based more on how easy it would be to rob, not whether they had one particular thing in stock.

I mean, any pharmacy is fairly likely to have some kind of drugs that will get you high...codeine, morphine, dilaudid, oxycodone, what-have-you.

And yeah, you don't need a prescription for booze, so it's different, although liquor stores also get robbed all the time. It's just one more ridiculous thing in life, brought to you by the wonderful arbiters of all morality who set up our prohibition laws, if you ask me. But then again nobody did....

You can get just as drunk just as quickly on any type of alcohol -- you just need to drink a specific amount. Alcohol is alcohol. Some of it is just more expensive or better tasting than others. Whereas pharmacy has penicillin, Allegra, etc., as well as controlled substances that addicts rob said pharmacies for. Not all drugs are "intoxicating"... only opiates are. It flips off a red flag to any Pharmacist or Tech if someone starts calling about any opiate derivative.

And, you better believe people only rob certain drugstores... you need to talk to some pharmacists and some cops. The ONLY reason a drugstore is robbed is because of the inventory they have in stock. No one's gonna rob the local RX for a stash of Allegra or Aumenten... but they will for some Oxycotin. And, when you say any pharmacy is gonna have something that'll get you high -- not necessarily. YOU couldn't find anything today, could you? Addicts do not want Tylonl-3... they ant the good stuff.. and pharmacies keep the stuff in short supply. Even if they had a barrrelful, they'd never tell you.

And, although I think drugs should be legal (except for meth), that's not the same thing as pharmacies controlling the dosage. You have to be VERY careful of this stuff -- you automatically become addicted after a few days. And, even if it were legal, addicts would still be knocking over the local RX.

I always thought most pharmacies carried most common drugs, and never considered percocets to be even that big of a deal. I guess I would not make a very good drugstore cowboy...I'd be the guy going through all kinds of trouble to walk out with a big bag of baby aspirin and penicillin or something.

I bet I still could have found something if I just had the run of the pharmacy, though...if I just wanted to get high. They probably had no percocets, but had a whole bunch of morphine tablets and oxycontin or something...

I do wonder about whether, if there were no prohibition laws, people would still rob pharmacies...I guess they would, as people do indeed still rob liquor stores (although usually for money, I think, not booze) and steal cigarettes, even though they are legal. Damn, now if I want to cure society's ills I have to find a way to end both prohibition and capitalism. And treat addiction effectively. Well, back to the drawing board....

a pharmacy to fill it for you.

Another method is to ask the doctor to call it into the pharmacy. Then the pharmacist knows that the Rx is legit. It could be that you were refused by the other pharmacists because they didn't know you.

I worked in a pharmacy for ten years, and the normal course of action was for the pharmacist to ask the customer if there was another pharmacy you would like to try first, then if that pharmacy didn't have it to call around until he did find it for you.

Unless the law is changed, there was no reason for the pharmacy to tell you they couldn't answer the question. If they couldn't do it, it would have been easy to say "no."

on edit: a Schedule II (controlled substance) drug must have a hard copy script handed to the pharmacist at the time it is filled. The prescribing doctor could call in the Rx, but you would still have to give a hard copy of the script to the pharmacist.

He didn't seem to want to help very much, either. I handed him the prescription, after waiting for him to finish opening, and he just said "We don't have that," handed it back, and dismissed me. This was the one who opened up a half hour late, so I was already mad at him before he even spoke to me.

Every pharmacist I've worked with has been very willing to help customers to the best of their ability. Their pay range in the late 1980s and very early 1990s was in the neighborhood of $40,000 to $50,000 in what is an over all low paying area.

I'm sure they are making at least that now. There is no excuse for ignoring the needs of the customer in the health care business.

Encountered this when wife had surgery. Went to pharmacy, they had one of the pain meds but the other I had to go to a CVS or whatever for the stronger type that had been prescribed.

where they are familiar with the MD who wrote the RX. If that doesn't work, check and see if the pharmacy at the Hospital you were at fills outpatient RX's.

On Edit: Call the ER and ask them where you can get the RX filled without a problem.