My complaint concerns the pharmacy. I have been getting my prescriptions for pain medications filled at this CVS for 8 years now. And for the the last 2 years I have been getting only what I can call harassment from 1 female pharmacist there. At this point I will leave her name out of this, though I can bet that the other employees in the pharmacy will know immediately who I am speaking of. Since almost all of my scripts are for C-2 drugs, the pharmacists must ensure that they comply with all state regulations concerning the filling of these scripts. I understand this especially since both my daughter & son-in-law are both registered pharmacists in NY. My problem here is this... I bring my scripts in to be filled right at the 48 hour mark before I run out of meds. I do this because my scripts are for large amounts of C2 medications and just in case they do not have enough in stock to fill it, they still have a day to order it and get it in before I run out of meds. I understand that the pharmacist can fill the script up to 7 days prior to the 30 day mark (when I will run out of meds). Though I have never asked them to do this for me, the one female pharmacist there, if she gets my script, it does not seem to matter to her if it's the 29th day or the 28th day since the last time the script was filled, she will put the script aside with the note..."too early to fill". When I come to pick it up I have to speak to the pharmacy manager who fills it immediately for me. Everyone in this pharmacy treats me wonderfully. I am always greeted with "hello Mr Charbonneau, how are you today" or some other respectful greeting from the other pharmacists, pharmacist technicians right down to the other pharmacy personnel. Everyone of them has always gone out of their way to help me. They all know I am 100 % disabled and it is very difficult for me to have to walk into the pharmacy. It is too difficult for me to get my electric wheelchair out of the van just to go inside to the pharmacy counter. I finally decided to write to someone at CVS because it is getting much too difficult and PAINFUL to have to keep coming inside to get my scripts straightened out. I beleive this problem I keep having with this one pharmacist stems from a compound prescription for my granddaughter that I was getting refilled. At this time the CVS store here in Latham NY was a "24 hour" CVS. I always took my scripts in to be filled after midnight as I was usually awake and it was so much easier to fill them at that time, plus I also got to know the night shift pharmacists. When my granddaughter was born, she was a "special needs baby" and required one of her medications to be a compound of Prevacid so it could be administered through her feeding tube. Knowing that this particular prescription should be done at a "compounding pharmacy", I asked one of the night pharamacists, (Jerry Solomon) if he could compound it for me. It was a simple compound requiring some 15 to 20 minutes of his time. He told me he could do it usually after 2AM. It always worked out great until the store changed from a 24 hour store to an 18 hour store. So while my daughter was working out getting the script filled at different pharmacy that was able to compound scripts I asked the day pharmacist at this CVS if they could make just one more compound for me. After all, I was a regular customer. The young lady said okay, but it would take her a while to make it up. That was fine with me and I was grateful. But when I picked it up I immediately noticed that there was too much medication here. It should have been a 4 ounce bottle but what I received was a 12 ounce bottle and I could tell by the color that the mix was inccorrect. When I informed the pharmacist of this she acted as if I had insulted her and questioned her professional competence. She grabbed the bag with the bottle in it and said she would do the compound again but it would take at least 6 to 8 hours. I needed the medication right now for the baby as we did not have another dose left for her. But the pharmacist acted as if I put her professional compentcy into question, which I certainly did not do. I simply asked her to check this compound again because it did not seem to be the same as the last one (the volumn was twice as much). She ended up giving it to another pharmacist to fill and that took another 4 hours. I knew that they were not a 24 hour pharmacy anymore and that they did not have the personnel or the time to do compounding. I just asked if they could do it one more time and that we were making arrangements to have another compounding pharmacy do it (Price Shopper as a matter of fact). Well, ever since that incident I have had nothing but grief whenever I present a script to be filled when she is there. I am writing now because it happened again today with a script that was right on time to be filled, but she said it was too early to be filled. Once again I hobbled into the pharmacy, spoke with the pharmacy manager who said "there is no problem Mr Charbonneau" and had it filled in 10 minutes.
Could someone speak with this pharmacist about what has happened to me. I cannot be the only one she has been giving a hard time to. I must also say that the rest of the pharmacy staff are first rate people who obviously like their job and get a great deal of satisfaction out of helping people with their medications.
Thank you and I just hope that someone actually reads this and talks to me about it.
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