I am, generally speaking, in pretty good health. Going to pharmacies for prescription drugs was a foreign experience for me—until a few days ago. And, it was quite an “experience.”
On Thursday afternoon, I had a minor surgery on my eyelid. It was simple and non-invasive, so that I was able to walk out of the hospital minutes after the procedure. Before going to work, I stopped by the pharmacy (my designated location on file) to pick up the prescribed eye drops. After a few phone calls, I was told that the prescription hadn’t been sent out yet.
I made it back to the pharmacy around ten forty at night. After a short wait, the pharmacist found my prescription. It took him a few more minutes to realize that the medicine was out-of-stock at his store. He sent me to another location on the same side of town.
It was around eleven when I walked into the second store. There was a line of customers. Immediately, I noticed that the crowd covered the demographic spectrum of the neighborhood: several late-middle-age people picking up their routine medicines; a young man making a quick stop with his dog on the last walk of the day; a young girl inquiring about certain medicine; an elderly couple, both seemed a bit confused; and a lady, who looked frail and, instead of standing in line, sat on a chair quietly.
The pharmacist was busy answering questions on the phone. A young assistant helped me looking up the information. She told me that my prescription was still being processed at the previous location, so she couldn’t fill it. A call was placed. We were put on hold. I got to watch more people picking up their medicines. Some regulars were identified by name as they walked in.
The lady that had been sitting there eventually walked up to the counter and talked to the pharmacist. He searched on the computer for a while; came back to tell the lady that her insurance was not accepted by his pharmacy chain. The only store that would take her insurance at that hour was fifty blocks away on the other side of town. She took the address and left quietly.
Half an hour went by, and our phone call was not picked up. The assistant told me that there was nothing she could do—which I understood. Between the store and the subway station, I made the decision to go back to the original location. The pharmacist, working alone, was busy labeling and packaging drugs while answering questions on the phone. As soon as he got off the phone, he asked why I was back. (My thick eyepatch made me easily recognizable.) He apologized for the mess-up, called to make sure that I would be able to pick up the medicine and sent me off.
It was after midnight. Because of late night construction, one of the subway lines would skip the station that I needed. I waited twenty minutes for another line and made it back to the second location. A mother was told that she couldn’t have her medicine because the website of her insurance was down for update. She had the choices of waiting till four AM when the website would be up and running again or paying for the medicine out of her own pocket. She burst into tears. Her daughter couldn’t wait that long without the medicine. Watching her picking up the phone with her shaky hands, I realized that I was luckier than many others who needed to visit pharmacies late at night. My tiny little bottle of eye drops was packed, labeled and ready for me at the counter. I took care of the co-pay and walked out.
Three hours after I visited my “regular” pharmacy I was home. As tired as I was, I had a hard time going to sleep. I kept thinking of the pharmacists who worked alone at night. How often would they have to make difficult decisions? How often would they make mistakes because of the heavy workload? I thought about how the online networks that were designed to speed thing up ended up causing all kinds of delays. I thought about the complications of the healthcare system. . ..