Filling Prescriptions Shouldn't Be This Hard
As the day draws near for my first chemotherapy infusion, there are a variety of prescriptions that I must get filled.
One is a prescription for an injectable drug called Neulasta. They have commercials on TV and ads in magazines about Neulasta; it's this stuff that either prevents your white blood cell count from dropping too low during chemo OR it helps you recover from the dip faster. Because Taxotere is notable for causing a drop in white blood cell count 7 to 10 days after the infusion, many patients get the Neulasta injection the day after chemo to help them out. If you get your infusion on a Friday, like me, there is no one around to give you an injection, so you have to inject yourself.
Yesterday I got a call from a company called Curascript. UCSF had sent them a prescription for Neulasta in my name. They told me that while they are contracted to provide injectables to my secondary insurance, they are not contracted to my primary insurance, who will be billed. They couldn't get through to UnitedHealthCare (UHC) and wanted my help...and quickly, because it was after 3 pm and they were on the East Coast. I needed to try to coordinate the prescription payment through UHC.
I immediately called UHC to find out what the deal is. After being transferred around, I learned that they use a company called Pharmacare for their injectable drugs, not Curascript. So, I called Curascript back and let them know this. They backed out of the picture leaving no one to handle this but me. Uh-oh.
I called Pharmacare back. They needed to register me as a new patient and member. They wanted to know when I needed the drug, which gets shipped by overnight mail. I had left messages with UCSF, but no one had responded to let me know if I was supposed to inject the Neulasta for this cycle (Saturday) or the next one (three weeks from Saturday). So I guessed this Saturday.
Since I will be at the infusion center all day Friday (unable to receive a package for a drug that costs around three thousand dollars) I figured that I would need to receive it on Thursday. They said that if my oncologist called a prescription in that day, they could authorize the shipment in time.
I did not hear back from UCSF until this morning, when a chemo nurse whom I'd never spoken to before called. Evidently, she was having a bad day, judging from her demeanor. In a forceful tone, she asked if so-and-so knew about Pharmacare being my insurance's pharmacy. I said, "I don't know who so-and-so is." She snapped, "She's the one who handles INSURANCE AUTHORIZATIONS!"
I think she singed off my eyebrows. All I could say was, "I'm sorry, I've never heard her name, so I didn't know who she was. I don't know who it was who called this in."
She copied me on some emails that circulated around, and finally someone was assigned the task of getting the prescription to Pharmacare. It was too late to get the package on Thursday, so I had them send the package to the infusion center for Friday delivery. Luckily, another cancer patient had already told me I could do that. Whew!
With that out of the way, I went to pick up my prescriptions at a local drug store. With Taxotere, you need prescriptions for dexamethasone, a drug that helps reduce fluid retention and allergic reaction, along with a variety of anti-nausea medications (four, in my case). I was also supposed to get a prescription for a scopolamine patch, one of those motion sickness patches that you stick behind your ear. That's not standard procedure, but my oncologist prescribed it because motion sickness is an issue for me even without chemo, and we didn't want the long drive back from chemo to be torture.
As it turned out, the prescription for the patch wasn't there. The pharmacy clerk told me that if the doctor didn't call in the prescription, they don't have time to call the doctor. They are too busy. Yeah, they bowled me over with their customer service. I called the nurse that I talked to earlier this morning. She was again annoyed and never heard about this. Hopefully, she'll get the prescription called in by tomorrow. I really don't know.
In the end, I feel like...should it be this hard? Did I really need to spend all day getting prescriptions?
I guess it's a good thing I went on hiatus with my clients. Who has time to get anything else done during business hours when they are arranging their cancer treatment?
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