Please check before you run out
I read a lot of other medical blogs. This was posted on theangrypharmicist: http://www.theangrypharmacist.com/archives/2011/09/careastatin-0-refills-remaining.html. She is on the receiving end of people who forget to refill their routine medications until they are out. Often they are out for days.
Folks, we all know when the bottle is almost empty. The bottle has the pharmacy number on it. It has the name of the doctor that prescribed it on it. If you need to call the doc, call when there is about a weeks worth left so that the process can be done. If you haven’t been seen for a year, call when the bottle says NO REFILLS. The doctor is going to need to see you.
In some offices they will schedule your appointment, then call you in enough medicine to get through until you run out of medicine. Other offices will want to see the whites of your eyes before you get another prescription. Most doctors are no longer giving prescriptions after hours or on weekends, because they don’t have access to your records. We no longer know our patients like your family doctor did 50 years ago. We also don’t trust people.
I have had patients call for antibiotics and “a few pain pills”. Then they only get the pain pills. I have one patient who only calls on the weekend because she has a bladder infection. I don’t know if she sees anyone else, but she never calls me when she could come to the office. I finally stopped calling her in medications when I went to chart her weekend call and realized she hadn’t been in for almost two years, and had called me on the weekend about 4 times.
We have an expression: lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Believe it.
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