Hello, hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction or tell me where I should post this question as I’m new to Lemmy and it made sense to post here.
The short story is I need to refill my Sertraline prescription but my pharmacy, Rite Aid, wouldn’t do it today even though I have 1 refill left and it’s been well over a month since I picked up my last prescription.
I was given two reasons the first being that on the label from my doctor it says office visit needed before refill and the second reason was my insurance said I had to wait till the 26th.
The office visit needed before refill has been on my bottles for the last 3-4 months, I have a feeling my doctor forgot to remove that as I saw them after the first bottle said that back in April and they renewed my script.
I’m not sure why my insurance is making me wait as like I said I haven’t picked up a refill in over a month, somehow I had extras and didn’t need to.
Rite Aid has the automatic refills which mine was automatically refilled at the end of last month and I didn’t have the time or need to pick it up meaning they put the prescription back in stock, in the past I’ve been able to either request a refill online later or just go and they’d refill it then. I had until the 28th of last month to pick it up then I got a voicemail on July 5th saying I had prescriptions to be picked up.
I tried explaining all this to the pharmacist but they still wouldn’t refill it. I get really bad withdraws if I go a few days without taking it and I don’t know what to do, could they refill it since I have refills left and I just pay full price without insurance? I am going to call them tomorrow and try that but wanted to post this question for other ideas to ease my mind for the time being.
I think your best option might be to call the doctor. Even if insurance is interfering with your refill, your doctor may have samples or may be able to get you some medication on a compassionate basis. Alternatively, maybe they can get a refill sent to a different pharmacy with updated information.
Call your doctor’s office and have them approve the refill with the pharmacy. If they don’t actually require you to visit first, that shouldn’t be an issue. They should just call the pharmacy and okay the refill, if the doctor is okay with that.
Ask the pharmacy for more information about the insurance. When was the last time it was filled, and for how many days?
Wait, so does the insurance think you filled it already because of a refill you never picked up? The pharmacist knows you never picked it up, but charged the insurance anyway? If that’s the case then that’s pretty blatant fraud on their part… which is possible I guess, but seems very unlikely to me. If they know you didn’t pick it up, it should be reversed with your insurance. It is possible they never reversed it by mistake, and asking them to check should be enough for that. If they’ve reversed it, but the insurance is being screwy, then a call to the insurance should be able to set things straight.
Source: pharmacist. I’ve seen lots of insurance nonsense, it’s like 60% of the job working retail.
Thank you that all make sense to me and I tried explaining it similar to that but I was slightly upset and trying not to take it out on them as I know it’s what the computer says so my thoughts were all over the place and may not have explained it properly. I will try calling the doctors first thing tomorrow and them afterwards.
SSRI withdrawal SUCKS. I highly suggest you call your doctor’s office first thing when they open next and explain the situation. They might be able to hook you up with “samples” to hold you over until your insurance gets its shit together.
They should be willing to give you a few days of pills in the interim regardless while you get this sorted. Push them on that. The SSRI withdrawal is real and awful.
Thank you all so much, I made a few calls this morning and got it all figured out.