Once again I am going to try to explain this common problem in the practice. I hope it will help you understand this common dilemma and what you can do to prevent it affecting your care. By far the most common reason my office responds to a request for a refill with a “no” and yet the pharmacy won’t send …
Insurance Coverage Denial – Appeal Process Overview
My insurer refuses to cover my prescribed treatment. What can I do? If your insurer denies your coverage, you can challenge your insurer’s decision by completing the following steps in order: Appeal the Decision How do I appeal the decision? If your insurer denies your claim, you have the right to an internal appeal.[1] This means you can ask your insurer …
Understanding a Prescription Label
How can I figure out if I will need Dr. Forster to write a prescription for me? Don’t refills happen automatically? I set them to refill automatically on Walgreens.. Why does Dr. Forster say I have a prescription approved when the pharmacist says I don’t have any refills? Prescription labels contain a great deal of information, but navigating the intricacies …
Medications for an Emergency
Several people recently requested medications to have on hand in case an emergency disrupts the supply. Here are some guidelines for these requests. This is from a useful post written by a doctor after a local emergency… “Ask your doctor for an additional prescription, explain what you’re doing and tell your doctor the meds will be going into storage,” says …
Pharmacy Apps
One of the most perplexing things about our healthcare system is how complicated it can make even simple tasks. This is particularly true when the issue involves sharing information among providers of care. Elsewhere we have talked about the “silo” problem and why it has motivated us to develop a clinic that tries to provide integrated care. Here I want …
Controlled Substance Refills
Controlled substances are medications with a potential for abuse or misuse. They are often, also, medications that have powerful effects on brain function. Common controlled substances that doctors prescribe include: Narcotic pain medications (Demerol, Norco, Tyco, etcetera) Stimulant medications (Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, etcetera) Benzodiazepines and similar sedating and anti-anxiety medications (Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Ambien, etcetera) Testosterone and some other hormone …
Prescription Savings
We have just updated the “links” page on this site with information about prescription medication savings and costs based on online research and an online discussion on the Psychopharmacology listserve. Pharmacist Stephen Saklad summarized information about local pharmacies – “Many of the Pharmacy Benefits Managers that are used by the insurers forbid the pharmacy to charge the lowest price, but …
Refills
“Why do you only give me a month’s supply of medication when you approve refills?” This is a pretty common question and I thought a blog post might be a good way of discussing the issues. After all a refill is a quick thing to handle, right? You call a number and press a few numbers, go onto your iPhone …