Kaiser pharmacy

I think I've mentioned many good things about the Kaiser Health Care system in this blog but I don't recall talking about the excellent pharmacy system within Kaiser. Not only are their individual pharmacies efficient and careful, but the system is geared to keeping the patient in mind at all times. Carolyn and I order all our refill prescriptions on the Internet and have the drugs shipped by mail so we seldom deal directly with the pharmacies except for initial prescriptions.

An example of the speed and efficiency of the system is that tonight Carolyn emailed her primary care physician about the need to renew her primary medicine for her myasthenia. No more than 30 minutes later she received a message in return telling her he had renewed her prescription and she needed only to pick it up at any pharmacy in the system.

Recently my neurology specialist prescribed a new medication for my Parkinson's Disease. He spent probably 10 minutes telling me the possible side effects with this medication as well as the hoped for good effects. He feels that the good effects far outweigh whatever side effect that will occur, and he doesn't really think any will occur. He then entered my prescription into his computer terminal. He warned me that the pharmacy may not have the medication in stock so I should give them a couple of days.

When we got home I called the central refill pharmacy which the doctor had selected and after punching a few numbers was told by a recording that they were out of stock. A couple days later, I got the message that the prescription was ready and waiting for me.

Usually, when I pick up a new prescription, they want me to "consult" with a pharmacist. I usually waive the consult because the pharmacist simply reads to me the warnings on the pill bottle and accompanying brochures. But this time there was no waiving of the consult. The pharmacy tech ringing up the purchase said, "The pharmacist wants to talk to you about this medication." No questions asked.

The pharmacist did have a lot to say to me, basically the same thing my doctor had said. In fact, she claimed to have discussed the prescription with the doctor and she did seem very knowledgeable about my condition and medications.

I now have two medications that cost over $600 for 100 days or $6 per day. If it weren't for Kaiser, I'd be paying $5,000 a year just for those two pills. Makes a person glad for insurance. And the speed and convenience makes a person glad for Kaiser.