Pharmacy Notes Customer as "Psycho" & "CrAzY!"

Ever wonder what your pharmacist thinks about you?  Well a Palm Beach woman recently found out. 
Employees at her local Walgreens pharmacy had been using the comments section of the nationwide database to leave demeaning comments about pharmacy customers.  Last week when Miss Karp received her medications the comment page was attached.  Pharmacy staff had typed in comments such as, "CrAzY!" and "She's really a psycho!!! Do not say her name too loud, never mention her meds by names".  Miss Karp explained that in the past pharmacy staff would yell out her name and what meds were ready.  Since she was taking medications for depression and anxiety she had asked that they not yell out such things.  Hmmmm, her wishes were not "psycho" or "CrAzY!" those are basic rights of confidentiality!

Comments

[Edward R Leathers RPh]

As a pharmacist I see deal with a great many people, some sweet as sugar, some as sour as lemons, and some no so sane. I have had people tell me that they were dead and embalmed then woke up and left the hospital. I have had one argue with me that his medication should cost less if I did not run it through on his insurance. I know of my duty as a profesional but enough is enough. Everyday I spend more time then necessary explaining that I am not in charge of the copay if they have insurance, that even though the label on the bottle says 2 refills left it also says that they are only good til 3 months ago. These are just a small part of the things that make every pharacists day longer and more complicated than needed. We are responsible for making sure that our patients get the correct medication for the disease. We also have to be the insurance rep, the refill getter, and the scribbled prescription figure-outer. I don't condone yelling out a patients meds into the waiting area of the pharmacy but having notes about patients may be needed. I put notes that I have to bill 2 insurance for a patient or that this patient cannot take large tablets. All I am saying is that maybe both the pharmacist and patient share some responsibility that seems to be handed to the pharmacist alone. So remember what I have said when you walk into your local pharmacy and want to complain about the time it takes to get your prescription filled, he might be calling for refills for you parents or even trying to find a cheaper therapy route for someone who is on a fixed income. Also check out this link about a customer causing problems at a pharmacy and the pharmacy staff doing thier best to smooth the situation over. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38511

Pharmacies blabbing out your medical information is a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, Public Law 104-191.

You may very well have grounds for a civil law suit.

[The Angry Gimp]

Woah! As someone who has spent a lot of time waiting in the pharmacy line at Walgreens, I can attest to an unusual number of psycho/crazy people at the counter. However, I would never voice that opinion out loud - ESPECIALLY if I worked there! What the heck, people? Not too professional.

I also suspect that the people waiting in line at the counter who I have believed to be psycho/crazy were probably perfectly sane when they arrived there, and were driven to that state by the experience at the pharmacy counter. It bewilders me how incompetent the one I go to is - I wish it weren't so darn convenient because if it was I'd switch today.

[charlesdawson]

The same problem arose in the UK a few years ago, when doctors' notes, which had been mega confidential, were made available to patients. Finding out that your physician had written "one more brain cell and he'd have a synapse" and the like did not improve doctor-patient relationships.

Nowadays they write in code: "anxious 50-year-old lady" equals "watch out - hysterical menopausal sufferer from psychosomatic aches and pains."