Test Strips Hag

Now that I've gotten Miss Switch out of the way, let's move on to Test Strips Hag. This woman is extraordinarily unpleasant to deal with. Pharmacy Manager and I deal with her as little as possible, and I always hope that Second Pharmacist will be there when she comes in because she likes him for reasons unbeknownst to us.

She gets diabetes test strips through HCFA, which takes care of Medicare B payments for medical devices and the like. No problem. We bill them just as we would any other insurance, and the customer pays twenty percent of the cost. Sounds simple enough, yes?

Obviously not. Every month, without fail, she looks at the $3 copay and says while glaring daggers at me, "Why is it always $3?! I'm not supposed to be paying ANYTHING!"

I always tell her that the copay her insurance gives us is the copay, and there's really nothing I can do about it. Well the other day, she brought in this letter from the state outlining the benefits of her additional, state-funded coverage. It said that it would cover most of her copays and that it would cover any deductibles and doughnut holes the patient might push themselves into.

Now that's a pretty damn good deal, but she seemed to think that it was saying she wasn't going to have to pay any copay at all ever. Well... No... The test strips she gets would be over $150 at the cash price, her HCFA price would be $15 something, so the state's compromise is $3. After Second Pharmacist explained this to her, she still seemed rather pissed off, but accepted that she's going to have to pay the $3.

If she weren't so unpleasant every single time she came in, I would probably be a lot more understanding. Diabetes can be scary, and having to pay when you somehow came to understand that you weren't supposed to is a little frustrating. Until I found out why she was paying the $3, I thought it may have been something we had been doing wrong and felt bad for her because it seemed like every time she came in, something went wrong.

Until she decided to be a spiteful she-demon, and take a little survey. Where she then promptly went through the list and answer "no" to any questions inquiring about her experiences with our store. INCLUDING that we somehow managed to fail to inform her of her HIPAA rights and responsibilities as well as our company's privacy policies, something that would be a major violation if it were actually true.

I think the next time she's at my counter, I'm going to take a little time to make sure she's aware of her rights. Because what sort of pharmacy employee would I be if I allowed someone to walk away without at least one of the printed copies we keep at the register?