03.27.06

pharmacist = vending machine

Posted in problem solving at 9:31 pm by nonattender

Why is it still 1890 at Walgreen’s? Sorry, I simply don’t believe that you’ve got to go “whip me up” a batch (in your mortar and pestle) of some drug that’s been around for 60 years and that I know very well comes direct from the manufacturer in bottles of 250,000…

What’s your function, exactly? You know, other than to needlessly complicate lives, waste time, and frustrate people (who are already sick and suffering) by forcing them to pretend with you that a huge percentage of your job couldn’t be done better by a modified (glorified) Coke machine….

Here’s how it should work:

Your doctor decides to prescribe you a particular drug (because some drug rep promised him a trip to hawaii - not because he wants to help you) and sends your electronic prescription to your “drug store” via the internet.  Your “e-scrip” arrives at the drug store and sufficient methods are used to verify the authenticity of the prescription.

No silly phone calls have to be made to doctor’s offices to verify prescriptions, as previously was sometimes the case (you know, for good drugs, the ones the bought-off DEA wants to make sure you don’t get access to because they’re cheap and usually work).

Cross checks are done instantaneously to spot adverse interactions/contraindications between any drugs that you might be taking concomittantly… Updated insurance information can be shared between physician/drug store, and this interchange will be transparent to the patient.  Payment information could be shared as well, if co-payment or full payment by patient is necessary, depending on insurance.  This gets the pharmacists off the phone - if you’ve ever been to a pharmacy, you know the reason you have to wait is because they’re chatting with some lonely shut-in who won’t let them off the phone bitching about how their insurance information isn’t right, or some insurance company robot that won’t admit to knowing their customer and providing the coverage they promised and accepted payment in the form of premiums to provide…

Further, there is no room for “handwriting interpretation” - no more mistaken prescriptions due to doctor scrawl… no more human error in counting or filling, either.. you can automate the printing and application of labels to bottles, and the printing and inclusion of informational inserts.  You can also automate the POS.  Good god, maybe have a 24 hour ATM window at the pharmacy - if your drug is one that is automated, you can get access to it without employee assistance, 24 hours a day.  Expand this concept.  Put a drug ATM on every street corner - make it a better world.  Hey, does that ATM have a Roche logo on it? I need a valium the size of a football.

Inside the pharmacy, there is a large vending machine, essentially the ridiculous apothecary shelves of “big bottles” of pills that currently exist, except with a means to count and sort and dispense and restock hundreds or thousands of the most common drugs - mechanically, electronically.  Think upside down office water cooler bottles, but smaller and more plentiful, with little rube goldbergian machinery connecting them all.  That’s how I like to picture it in here - even though I know it could be elegantly (and ridiculously) simple.

If even the top 100 RX’s could be automated, this would be a monstrous increase in efficiency and would probably take up about as much space as a full sized refrigerator… it’s not rocket science - this is why 19 year old “pharmacy techs” are usually the ones doing the work behind the counter.  They can be replaced, and it will make things much safer for the rest of us who are old enough to actually need some drugs that you don’t smoke.

We also, so say the pharmacists, have a shortage of pharmacists, and those we do have are always screaming that they need more time to do “customer care” or “patient consultation”. IE, they want to play doctor.  This desire makes perfect sense as all doctors now want to play pharmacist.  Two men enter, one man leave - I say.  Or two men enter, one men leave - as Neil Armstrong might say… but anyway:

Sorry pharmacists, but maybe you can go be a doctor, or get a decent job in research - or, failing that, be a drug rep:  I’d be happy to support legislation that says you have to be a licensed pharmacist in order to lobby doctors concerning pharmaceuticals.  I know it’s a wild idea, but it makes much more sense than the current requirement, which is to have responded to the classified ad in the local weekly newspaper.

So, someone get to it.  If you make a success of it, repay me by inserting me into the database and giving me the right to self-dispense in perpetuity.

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