Dear CVS,
I recently
had a very frustrating and disconcerting experience at the pharmacy at store
#8106.
On Sunday, I
called in three prescriptions for refill.
When my mom went and picked them up on Monday, there were only two. I assumed that I must have accidentally
forgotten to call the third one in, so on Monday night, I called in the missing
prescription (again!). On Tuesday, when I went to pick it up, I was told there
was nothing ready for me.
I was then
told that my insurance was refusing to cover it and that is why it hadn’t been
filled. I agreed to pay for it
out-of-pocket because as of Tuesday, I was out of the medication.
Then, I was
told that they would not be able to fill it right away and I would have to come
back two and a half hours later.
I left CVS
and called my insurance company asking for an explanation as to why they
wouldn’t cover it. Because it had been
covered the month before by a lesser insurance, they decided to give me an
override and will cover the medication for a year. They called the pharmacy and informed them of
that. I thought that’s where the problem
ended. But I was wrong.
When I went
back to CVS, they went to get the prescription for me and they couldn’t find
it. They knew they had filled it. After 10 minutes, they finally decided to
fill it (again!). And imagine, this only
took about five minutes, so it is unclear to me why it took them over two hours
to do the same thing the first time.
As I’ve
continued to stew about the incident and the incompetence of the staff, I have
come upon a greater concern. Did someone
else end up with my medication? Has a
violation of HIPAA occurred? The
prescription that they claim to have filled was not found while I was in the
store, and it’s unclear whether it was found at all.
I have
experienced nothing but problems with this particular pharmacy and its
staff. Right now, I know I will be pulling
my prescriptions from this location and am still trying to decided whether I
will take my prescriptions to another CVS equidistant to my house, or will take
them to a different pharmacy altogether.
Rarely have
I experienced such incompetence at a pharmacy, and I am chronically ill, so I
have had a lot of experience with pharmacies.
And never before have I been concerned that my protected health
information has been compromised. This
is totally unacceptable.
I want CVS
to launch a full investigation into this matter, and I need to know exactly
what happened to the prescription that was supposedly filled and then went
missing.
Sincerely,
Leslie Rott