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Why is Metadate So Heavily Regulated?

Posted by mair on March 15, 2007, at 15:56:39

I take a daily combination of 4 different drugs, one of which is Metadate. The local pharmacy allows me no refills for Metadate, and I have to physically present the paper prescription to the pharmacist along with my photo id. A phone call from my pdoc or a faxed prescription will not suffice. When I go the pick up the prescription it's never in the bin with all of the other prescriptions so the tech can never find it until she's checked on the computer. It's apparently always hidden in the back in some super-safe location. I have to show my id again to pick it up. I know the photo id part is maybe typical in some areas of the country for all prescriptions, but I live in a fairly rural area where it's not typical at all, and no one has ever asked me to show an id to pick up any of my other scrips.

The whole process feels demeaning and poses alot of logistical headaches, not the least of which is getting a paper prescription from a psychiatrist whom I otherwise never see and hardly ever talk to either. She has no staff, so I either have to email her or leave a message on her answering machine. Unless my message or email has explicit delivery instructions, I don't always know if she got the message or the email, for that matter, so there is always this uncertainty. She has to mail the prescription to me or leave it somewhere in the vestibule of her office for me to pick up. To minimize the inconvenience, she will usually give me 2 prescriptions at the same time, but this last time she put the same date on both of them. Thus when I presented the second prescription to CVS, they refused to fill it without getting her verbal authorization since the scrip looked to be a month old. On another occasion, I didn't find out until I went to pick up the prescription that the pharmacy didn't have on hand enough pills for the whole prescription. They told me that because it was a regulated drug, they couldn't give me a partial prescription. In that instance I had to really scramble around to get it filled by someone else before it had fully run out.

I'm a respectable-looking professional woman in my 50's who would fit no one's profile of a dealer or forger of prescriptions. This pharmacy has access to my whole drug history so they know I take this every month. There's nothing about this drug and my reaction to it which would make it obvious to me why they make it so difficult for me to get it. It's ridiculously expensive. I can't imagine taking it if it wasn't pretty necessary to my on-going mental health. But over the last 10+ years, I've had a very difficult time coming up with an even half-way effective combination of drugs to reasonably manage chronic major depression. Metadate has made a difference to my ability to work more productively. I wouldn't dream of changing it right now, but the process makes me feel so defensive and suspect - like someone is passing severe judgment on me because I have to take this drug.

I don't know how much of what I go through is CVS corporate procedure and how much is mandated by the FDA. Can someone give me a reasonable explanation about why I'm put through so many hoops?

mair


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poster:mair thread:741328
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070314/msgs/741328.html