Thursday, January 21, 2010

More Adventures With Nurses

A new patient of ours brought in a script for azathioprine and her insurance requires a PA on it. We slapped the PA phone number and patient's ID on a fax and sent it off to the doc's office.

Simple right?

Not when there's one of nursings finest involved.

First she calls us and, with an attitude a 14 year old would be proud of, states they 'just got a PA in September that was good indefinitely and they don't need to do another one.' I kindly explained that she was new to use and that often PAs do not transfer from pharmacy to pharmacy. I asked her if she had any new insurance info and she stated the patient didn't bring new info in this past week so her insurance must be the same.

*Click*

Then she calls back saying that the insurance hasn't seen a claim for this drug since September so we must be billing it incorrectly. She gave me a PA number to try and when it failed she said she would call them back. Of course she cut me off before I could inquire anymore.

*Click*

She calls back again saying that Humana confirms that the PA is still valid and we are not billing it correctly. I then, with a slight grin on my face, inform her that her Humana plan ended at the start of the year. I pointed out that in, a very noticeable box, I put her current insurance, their PA number and her ID number.

The only reply I get? 'Oh'.

*Click*

Reading is so terribly hard. Its much easier just to blame someone else isn't it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hehehehe... I came to your blog expecting this.

Now you see why I have an ax to grind with these dimwitted twits.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

It's so much easier to yell at someone else than to think.

Pharmgirl said...

You need to find that nurse's boss and let her know about this. That sort of behavior is not acceptable.

PharmJam said...

Yesterday-

Nurse- "I need to call in a script"

Me-" Alright give it to me."

Nurse-" blah blah, Cozaar 40mg, 1 po qd"

Me-"Cozaar does not come in a 40mg, are you sure that is the drug or dose the Dr. wants?"

Nurse- "Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..O wait I guess he wants Crestor, that's it!"

Me-"You guess? Well these patient has never had a statin before and 40mg is a high dose of Crestor."

Nurse- " O wait, it says 10 mg, that is what Dr wants, 10mg."

Me-" Could you get the doctor to the phone to verify this script for me please, I will not be able to fill it until he verifies it."

Nurse-" uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..1 secong let me check where he is"

Long story short, the doctor verified Crestor 10mg was correct but patient had no insurance so he switched it to Zocor anyway. He did not care they he had a careless, moron for a nurse calling in his scripts when I brought it up to him. It really shows how much he cares about his patients. I made a note to tell the patient, in the future they may want to get hard copy scripts from this doc's office.