I have a real good relationship with my endo’s physician’s assistant. She gets it that I only want to see them twice a year and that I pretty much have total control of what I do. I do the standard bloodwork, eye test, urinalysis, etc etc and so far, fingers crossed all is good.
My endo will not fill an RX unless you go see him so anything in between these visits is flatly denied.
I called his assistant this week to send me a letter to bring with me incase I get stopped at the airport with my supplies and I also asked for 2 vials of lantus as my pump’s warranty is expired and I am nervous it will die.
Office girl called back days later and said they would mail me (I asked for faxed) me a letter and that I need to call the pharmacy and have the pharmacy write an RX and fax to them to sign, yada, yada, yada.
Today I get a call, because now I think endo is involved, and he won’t fill the order until I call and chat about this lantus, so I am sure he did not get the full message and I bet he does not have it anywhere written that I use to be on lantus.
Should not be this hard, my regular MD fills anything I ask for, but she won’t follow my D any longer since I went on pump, oy vey.
Sounds like you need to try and find yourself a new endo if possible. The one thing I know I now need with a doctor’s office is the ease with which I can call and get something done (like a refill) without jumping through hoops. I understand if a medication is new, but something you’ve taken before should not be hard to get accomplished. And also it’s important to make sure that office staff know how to relay messages properly. If a basic message can’t get properly relayed, that signals (to me) an issue.
I’m glad you posted this. If you go to the place I think you do, I occasionally think that I’d want to switch over to what I perceive might be a bigger, fancier clinic but I work south and east of here and going North (where I think you said your doc is?) but my doc seems pretty amenable to doing stuff and worked through the highly annoying Blue Cross test strip letter of medical necessity scenario pleasantly for me. For now, change is on hold.
I used to get into the “we won’t refill your rx’s” scenarios a lot more but that was when I would blow off labs/ doctors for years at a time. I don’t perceive you as being that way and I’m suprised the doc would be heavy-handed about it with someone who’s been around for a while. I get annoyed b/c my doc has limited hours and I’d much rather deal w/ an office that was open after work so I could call them when I go “oh yeah, I’d better call and get _____ refilled” or whatever but that’s about my only complaint. I don’t see them that much anyway so it’s not crucial. Recently she wanted a 3 month A1C though which sort of suprised me, I’m kind of like “why bother?”. She also seems interested in getting my CareLink password which would certainly be easier than printing all the crap off but I am never keen on password sharing.
I recently had to pay $60 out of pocket to see a doctor (who was in for my GP while she was out on maternity leave) because she wouldn’t renew my beta-blockers without seeing me. I’ve been on my beta-blockers for 3 years. I was released from the care of my cardiologist 2 years ago and the GP has been writing the script. It’s documented all over the place in my file that I have tachycardia.
All they did at the appt was take my pulse and BP and ask ‘why do you need this?’…such a waste of my time and my money!
I agree, it should NOT be this hard to get refills on meds we’ve been on!
My last endo would only write me prescriptions for 3 months at a time, including my insulin. I am a T1 so obviously I need it. The first time I didnt have to deal with the refill the pharmacist called it in for me. But my doc only filled one for the remaining of the year, fast acting and not the long. She apparently refused to approve the Lantus. When I called the office for the I was told she was out for the holidays but to email her and she could approve it over the phone. Well I emailed her explaining how I was on my last pen, I had a death in the family and it was the holidays. I explained I didnt have money to come see her just for a prescription she knew I needed. She never called it in nor responded back, my email lets me know when someone reads it so I know she got it. I just went on every doc profile where she was listed and gave her bad reviews. To go to her for a visit cost almost $500, I didnt have good insurance at the time and she only seen me 15mins and spent all of that trying to prescribe me meds I didnt even need. She prescribed me blood pressure meds for my kidneys before she ever seen my bloodwork, there is nothing wrong with my kidneys nor blood pressure. The entire time I went to her I felt like she became a doctor for the money and not to help. She was very cold-like in the visits never really giving me eye contact. I had more of a relationship with the recieptionist and nurse…That was the worst endo I have ever been to
No, it sure shouldn’t be this hard. We’re not asking for narcotics. Had one endo who wrote my strip Rx for only 6 months. Another endo cancelled my insulin scripts. Yes, cancelled! I didn’t know until I needed a refill & it was denied. Would have been nice if I was told when I called the office to say I wouldn’t be using their services any more. So much for the Hippocratic Oath.
Tired of being held hostage by endos. I use only my PCP now.
Just for contrast, when I lived in Paris, I discovered that the French pharmacies will sell you insulin and hypodermics without a prescription. I guess they just assume you’re a grown-up who might possibly know what you need to manage your own diabetes? I had a letter from my American doctor, but the pharmacist by my apartment in Drancy (a suburb north of Paris) just waved her hand when I tried to give her the letter and said, “Oui, oui, pas de problème…” and off she went to get the Lantus and a box of hypodermics that matched the ones I had in hand from my American pharmacy.
I also threw my back out (and experienced such crippling pain that I could hardly breathe) when visiting the Louvre. The nurse in charge of the infirmary at the Louvre offered me what would be considered a Schedule I controlled substance (equivalent to oxycodone, per my sister the R.N.) while I waited for the ambulance to take me to be seen by a doctor in the E.R.
We got a good laugh out of that one. If a nurse in the U.S. did that, she’d lose her license and face criminal prosecution.
I’m only writing this to point out that other civilized countries don’t match our paranoia and control level when it comes to getting the medications we need.
Cancelling an insulin script (Gerri’s post) is rediculous. I think I’d even call it malicious.
Some doctors are trying to make it because the costs of malpractice insurance continue to rise and rents continue to rise and what the insurance companies pay keeps dropping. They only get paid when you come in. I was in a doctors office that charges $10/page of forms he has to fill out. It is posted on a big sign on the window the receptionist sits behind. I never really thought of all of the stuff we expect them to do for us for free. Not defending them, but it is a business. I know my insurance company wants doctors to see diabetics every 3 months, at least, so it is possible they have pressure from the insurance company to see you every 3 months. I don’t know.
A friend was visiting Spain a few years ago & had a similar experience. She passed out cold on the street. Someone kindly called an ambulance, she was taken to the ER & given a battery of tests. Nothing amiss was found, but she was in pain from hitting her head on the sidewalk & somehow also hurt her arm. They had her come back in 24 hours for a follow-up, determined she didn’t have a concussion & gave her a bottle of serious painkillers. BTW, her entire bill for everything was ony several hundred dollars! Imagine what that would have been in the US, if an ambulance would have even taken a foreigner to an ER with no questions asked.
Other countries don’t have our unfortunate Puritanical heritage.
Tee, I thought it was malicious also. I was being punished for firing my endo. It was retribution. Withholding insulin from a diabetic! My mother’s doctor now charges several dollars per page for faxes.
During my research I have determined that the German system is the very best in the world. Their doctors still do house-calls, if you can imagine – especially for the elderly, shut-ins, the disabled and people struggling with self-management of chronic conditions. The doctor will look in your fridge and cabinets, sit down and talk about meal planning, managing your family stresses, give advice on better self-care, hook you up with someone to help with shopping and housework if needed (e.g. to spare an injured back, or if your vision is impaired, etc.) – as well as the most high-tech care imaginable. It’s a wonderful system, based on a German social ideal of everyone deserving to be cared for, a real “we’re all in this together” attitude that has evolved there around social welfare.
Of course, this ideal would be difficult for some ruggedly independent Americans. For example, if a child is born out of wedlock, not only are the biological mother and father responsible to pitch in financially – their entire family is expected to help. So if your brother or sister has a wandering eye, you could end up being held responsible for contributing to support their scattered progeny. The ideal is that it’s not the child’s fault, so the entire family on both sides must pull together, if possible, to make sure that the child has as secure and healthy a life as possible before the state contributes support for the child. In other words, you won’t find the nephews or granddaughters of wealthy bankers or other successful professionals living on the dole.
What a wonderful medical system. Of course, what’s truly exemplary is the evolved worldview that people are responsible for each other. No judgment or blame. It’s a tribal model of community.
Re. the Louvre – they get something like 6 million visitors per year – divided equally, that would be 16 thousand visitors per day – a small city. Of course, it’s not evenly divided, the summer per-day visitors are probably more like 30,000, with a much smaller visitor count in the dead of winter.
The infirmary was the size of a small doctor’s office. The nurse was quite a hoot, managing to use the French word for “fat” (grosse) about ten times while the guys from the ambulance were helping me into a wheel-chair for the ride up the elevators to the waiting ambulance. Roughly translated, she said something like, “Due to her extreme fatness, her enormous large fatness has caused her back to be injured from turning while very fat, such that the fatness has caused her back to be strained lifting and turning all that fat.” It was hard not to laugh. I guess we all can’t be 4’11", 95-lb. French twits. Knowing French women as I do, she was probably wearing about $200 worth of lingerie – on a nurse’s salary – it gives them the confidence to judge lesser women who have not achieved their level of fashion refinement. ;0)
I arrived in Paris in the middle of January, and became completely spoiled, enjoying enormous rooms full of priceless, amazing art all by myself for 20 to 30 minutes at a stretch before I encountered another visitor, depending on the time of day.
It’s an amazing place. I bought an annual pass while I was living in Paris and went there seven or eight times at least. Still, I only saw a small fraction of their permanent collection. They have tens of thousands of objects d’art and rotate them out onto display. Fortunately, despite my enormously fat fatness, I only needed to visit the infirmary once and my back healed nicely once I pulled the mattress off of my weird little bed and put it on a sheet on the nice, firm floor of my hotel room.
I was in Paris for a week & would love to return. I wished I had roller skates for the Louvre. Far too much to see, experience & eat to only be in Paris a week. How fortunate you were to be there for a good while & not during tourist season. Oui, Parisian women are fashionistas & the men were the most handsome I’ve ever seen.
No, it shouldn’t be this hard, I agree. I would look around for another endo. If there is any way you can get recommendations beforehand (as it takes three months or more to make an apppointment), that would be helpful. Our endo is very helpful getting preauthorizations for more strips, helping us with documentation for getting Dexcom… any thing we need medically. I know there are other endos out here who will help. But I hope you are able to get a recommendation so you don’t have to hunt around,.
My endo and physician’s assistant are fine when I go for my visits, it is the in between stuff that makes me crazy. I called this a.m. and left another message of why I needed the Lantus, and yes I used it before, and I need it for vacation and their answering machine message was very intense when it came to refills. That only in an emergency will they refill RX’'s in between and that it would be determined on a request by request basis, oy vey. We shall see what Monday brings as the phone tag continues. My sister called me right after I had left the message and she said are you not having a good day as my tone of voice was pretty uptight.
