Is this a follow-up to a previous post? Trying to follow, here....

Yes, I had posted about my pharmacy stating that I had to pick up strips to test the blood the same day I called in. Cannot find original posting.

At this point, I think I would check with another pharmacy. Maybe even a meds by mail, they are usually less expensive anyway.

Change pharmacies or go mail order - they don't want your business...is this a chain pharmacy, or a mom&pop place?

I remember Marie's original post. She had gone to her pharmacy to pick up prescription medicines and diabetes strips for her hubby, the pharmacy told her hubby had to come in in person.They blamed changes on Medicare rules. Now why the heck would the federal govt make determinations like that? I'd definitely phone other pharmacies in the area, find out what are their policies on picking up scripts, accepting faxes,etc. Her old pharmacy obviously is not interested in keeping established customers. They probably make more money off cigarette sales.

I'm a diabetic who tests daily and I've been following this thread, as well as Marie's previous thread, with some interest. Medicare has changed their script policies several times over the last few years to the point that it's very annoying if one's been in the medicare system for a long time and receiving strips on a regular basis. I don't think it's your pharmacy, Marie. They're just doing what Medicare now demands of all strip suppliers. If you find a pharmacy that doesn't adhere to these requirements, they're not meeting the current Medicare demands/guide lines. The only variations that I've been aware of are if you use a Medicare approved medical mail order supplier.

Beyond the above, I've learned that there's an apparent enormous "black market" for diabetic supplies and tightening of the script policies has been Medicare's attempt to control abuse of the system. In my area of the country, there have been at least two raids over the last year or so of illegal strip storage/sales locations. Considering that if I had to pay for my strips out-of-pocket they would cost me $137.99/100 strips...I can see where this has become a very lucrative illegal market.

HTH

Anne

I just turned 65 on the 25th of April and with that birthday I was switched from Medicaide to Medicare.
What a nightmare, but that is another story all to itself, however:

Last Tuesday Jan was out shopping and she had to stop by our pharmacy. While she was there she called to tell me that they had a prescription for me that my doctor had called in. I said, "No problem, just pick it up and if there is any co-pay use my debit card (Jan carries a copy of my debit card).

When Jan got home she said she did not get my prescription because I have to go to the pharmacy and sign something.

The next morning I went to CVS and talked to the pharmacist, and after she explained it, I have to say, I am very favorably impressed.

She said about a year ago the Medicare/Medicaide bean counters came in and did an audit. They were not in the least concerned about what we charge for drugs, what they were looking for was fraud. She said, just in our store alone we have about 10,000 customers who get controlled meds and a very large percentage of those ppl are either on Medicaide or Medicare but what they were actually checking was to see if the customers on our list were actually alive. She says, you know only too well that many of our customers are physically or mentally shutins and they rely on a third party to pick up their meds, but what the bean counters were finding was that some of the customers had died, but the third party was still routinely picking up the prescription. In fact, they found one that was picking up a very highly controlled med for a person who had died 3 yrs before. Needless to say, those meds were being used to support a personal habit or being sold on the street.

She said, "you can still have a third party pick up your meds, but our store has a new policy where we ask every customer to come in at least once every 6 months and sign a letter confirming they are still alive & well, and on that letter we can confirm the names of ppl that we are authorizing to pick up meds for us, and if you cannot physically come in, call us and we can have our delivery man bring the form to you."

She turned and walked over to one of the clerks and got a paper which she brought back to show me. "Look here, we now get a list from the county coroners office once a week listing everyone who died in our county in the last 7 days, and when we get that list we have one of the clerks post the info on our computer to insure no one can get any meds for that person."

She then told me that although this is a policy in thier store, they are rapidly convincing other pharmacies in the area, both CVS & others to adopt the same policy. Not only will it help control the ammount of prescription meds that are ending up on the street, it will ultimately help reduce medical costs as well...

Personally,,,I am all in favor of it.

Well-explained, Anne and Lazypup. This all goes along with having to show I.D. when you see an MD. They need to verify you are the person whose insurance they are going to bill.

The first time I ran into anything like this control was in Hawaii. No pharmacy there can fill a prescription for any medication that contains a narcotic substance unless the scrip was written by an MD licensed in the State of Hawaii. It was an attempt to stem the drug trade. I don't know how effective it was for that, but it increased revenue to Hawaiian MD's -- and to the State, since every monetary transaction is taxed in Hawaii, even payment to your doctor. (It's about 4%.)