Is it just me or do some doctors really abuse the voicemail?

[doctorOP]

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I understand if a doctor wants to call in something quick and doesn’t wanna wait for someone to pickup. But some doctors really use it for their own convenience so they don’t have to write out their stuff and send a fax.

I had a doctor who left 19 prescriptions on the voicemail in one recording. Luckily I had an intern working that day, or else I would have had to waste 10 min standing there writing furiously with patients staring at me, waiting for their consultations, vaccines, prescriptions. This is a very busy store with almost no downtime, so we always have to squeeze out time throughout the day to clear the voicemails.

I also get medical assistants who leave very speific insulin directions on the voicemail (x unit for x grams of carb, then x unit correction for x unit over 150 bg etc...). Of course I always have to listen to those 3 times to make sure everything is right because I don’t wanna mess with insulin dosing. But do these doctors not care about the risk of making mistakes on their insulin instructions?

Then there are doctors who call in 5 prescriptions but change their mind back and forth during the recording about dose, quantity and refills. ie in the middle of dictating the the 4th medication, they would go back and change one thing on the 1st medication. I always have to keep crossing out stuff and rewriting.

I wish these doctors could just write out their things and fax the prescriptions so everything is on paper.

 

[Sine Cura]

"How many prescriptions in total?"

"Nine"

"You will need to fax the scripts over."

Cut em off if they lie

 

[owlegrad]

"How many prescriptions in total?"

"Nine"

"You will need to fax the scripts over."

Cut em off if they lie

You can ask questions to a voicemail?

 

[wagrxm2000]

Delete the voice mail and say you didn't get it?

Your word against the doctors. Say it's safer to send it electronically.

 

[Rouelle]

Drop the people’s elbow on their candy a$@?

 

[RxPreceptor]

The prednisone ultra specific taper VMs usually get to me...back & forth...60mg day 1 two divided doses for 2 days, then 50mg...once daily...I mean twice daily...in divided doses...going down 10mg/day Q2 days, etc. follow up for further instruction (qty prescribed making 14+ days of course).

 

[Sine Cura]

Oops my bad. Reading is hard

If they're doing it to you they're doing it to everyone else so be that pharmacy where they say "but I don't have this problem with other pharmacies" and make them fax over orders. "We need it for our records." "I can't make it out on voicemail." etc.

 

[Dr Wario]

Why exactly are phone in scripts still legal in the year of our lord, 2017?

 

[owlegrad]

Why exactly are phone in scripts still legal in the year of our lord, 2017?

Ding ding ding! I say make all scripts mandatory e-scripts. Let the docs (and their nurses, receptionists, janitors) have an app on their phones (if they don't already). There is no need to for the poor reception and other issues that come from voicemails.

 

[Rouelle]

Not a voicemail, but:

Got a call today on dr line. Tech answered and got “let me talk to the pharmacist.” I got on and the nurse said, “my dr wanted me to call and see what OTC allergy eye drops there are.”

Well there’s Zaditor, and then there’s Google. She asked me how to spell ketotifen as she relayed the spelling to the dr beside her. Thanks for calling the Monday after Thanksgiving for that.

 

[maria1oh]

There are apps that convert your voice mails to text. Not 100% accurate but it would be nice to get an idea who the voice mail is for.

 

[6GodPharm]

If the voicemail is mumbled or the person doesn’t speak proper english it gets deleted, other than that i’m good with VM. But if the VM starts with a lot of “umm” and “NVM lets use this strength “ and a lot of other back and forth crap i’m deleting and going about my day.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

I understand if a doctor wants to call in something quick and doesn’t wanna wait for someone to pickup. But some doctors really use it for their own convenience so they don’t have to write out their stuff and send a fax.

I had a doctor who left 19 prescriptions on the voicemail in one recording. Luckily I had an intern working that day, or else I would have had to waste 10 min standing there writing furiously with patients staring at me, waiting for their consultations, vaccines, prescriptions. This is a very busy store with almost no downtime, so we always have to squeeze out time throughout the day to clear the voicemails.

I also get medical assistants who leave very speific insulin directions on the voicemail (x unit for x grams of carb, then x unit correction for x unit over 150 bg etc...). Of course I always have to listen to those 3 times to make sure everything is right because I don’t wanna mess with insulin dosing. But do these doctors not care about the risk of making mistakes on their insulin instructions?

Then there are doctors who call in 5 prescriptions but change their mind back and forth during the recording about dose, quantity and refills. ie in the middle of dictating the the 4th medication, they would go back and change one thing on the 1st medication. I always have to keep crossing out stuff and rewriting.

I wish these doctors could just write out their things and fax the prescriptions so everything is on paper.

Under no circumstances would I allow this.

I've had an MD claim to have given me different meds than they said on the phone, and the only thing that saved my hide was that I wrote "echo" and check marked the drug name.

 

[FarmD711]

I hate hate hate oral prescriptions. Why is this ever allowed? It puts patients at risk and it puts us at risk because we have no mechanism to prove what we heard.

I’ve had doctors yell at me for requiring DOB when taking a phone in. And for asking for NPI. I swear they think it’s easier and faster for us and the patient. But phone ins take longer than an Erx. I damn well aren’t immediately entering phone ins I receive. They go in the pile and we get to them when we can.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[doctorOP]

Thanks for all the replies. I actualldy didn’t realize deleting unclear voicemails was this common. When I was an intern, every pharmacist I worked with always went out of their ways to try and clarify every single voicemail. Sometimes they would spend a long time trying to track down the doctor and the patient in order to clarify things up. Meanwhile, work in the pharmacy piled up and the line of patients grew. I thought what they did was the norm but always felt that they were spending too much time helping out one patient while causing many more patients to wait and suffer.

 

[lalaland33]

Not a voicemail, but:

Got a call today on dr line. Tech answered and got “let me talk to the pharmacist.” I got on and the nurse said, “my dr wanted me to call and see what OTC allergy eye drops there are.”

Well there’s Zaditor, and then there’s Google. She asked me how to spell ketotifen as she relayed the spelling to the dr beside her. Thanks for calling the Monday after Thanksgiving for that.

I'm curious...what would happen if you actually told them "Please check Google. Goodbye."?

 

[pharm B]

I called a hospital once and had them send the orders in via fax. She gave me no warning at the beginning of her original message. When I got to script number five on her voicemail, I heard her mumble "jesus, there's like eight more..."
"Voicemail, deleted."

 

[owlegrad]

Thanks for all the replies. I actualldy didn’t realize deleting unclear voicemails was this common. When I was an intern, every pharmacist I worked with always went out of their ways to try and clarify every single voicemail. Sometimes they would spend a long time trying to track down the doctor and the patient in order to clarify things up. Meanwhile, work in the pharmacy piled up and the line of patients grew. I thought what they did was the norm but always felt that they were spending too much time helping out one patient while causing many more patients to wait and suffer.

I never realized either. All my preceptors took every voicemail and so did I. I thought it was part of the job.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

I never realized either. All my preceptors took every voicemail and so did I. I thought it was part of the job.

You have to have teeth sometimes.

Big pointy teeth

 

[deleted820760]

I never realized either. All my preceptors took every voicemail and so did I. I thought it was part of the job.

Me too. I never deleted voicemails without taking down the prescription.

 

[owlegrad]

You have to have teeth sometimes.

Big pointy teeth

Why stop at voicemails? You can also delete eRX's and throw away hardcopies. I can see now I was doing it wrong all along. 😉

 

[CynicalIntern]

I don't like filling prescriptions anymore, so I throw all the pills in the trash and tell the patient that I'm out of stock.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

Why stop at voicemails? You can also delete eRX's and throw away hardcopies. I can see now I was doing it wrong all along. 😉

If I got a blurry fax where I couldn't read the any of the information you bet your ass I would.

 

[owlegrad]

If I got a blurry fax where I couldn't read the any of the information you bet your ass I would.

Wait, are we talking about voicemails that are difficult or impossible to transcribe? Of course those get deleted. What else can you do with them? I thought we were talking about long voicemails. Comparing a long voicemail to an illegible fax is false equivalence.

I am curious how far it goes though, When you get a hand written script that is illegible do you throw it away and tell the patient to get a new script? Or do only faxes and voicemails get this special treatment?

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

Wait, are we talking about voicemails that are difficult or impossible to transcribe? Of course those get deleted. What else can you do with them? I thought we were talking about long voicemails. Comparing a long voicemail to an illegible fax is false equivalence.

I am curious how far it goes though, When you get a hand written script that is illegible do you throw it away and tell the patient to get a new script? Or do only faxes and voicemails get this special treatment?

Your English is bad and don't take my posts literally

EDIT:

lol, I agree that deleting clear but long voicemails and doing nothing afterwards is bad.

Of course you call to tell them to fax them in.

Make something up.

"It was garbled" "it cut them off"

Double edit:

I'm a bit amused that you're acting like that is some unholy act that needs an ibuprofen pentagram on the counter for it to work.

When you were retail, did you honestly never have patients walk up expecting you to have a prescription that you'd never received?
That's a multiple times a day thing around these here parts

The current quote chain is based on OP mentioning unclear VM, too.

 

[owlegrad]

Your English is bad and don't take my posts literally

EDIT:

lol, I agree that deleting clear but long voicemails and doing nothing afterwards is bad.

Of course you call to tell them to fax them in.

Make something up.

"It was garbled" "it cut them off"

Double edit:

I'm a bit amused that you're acting like that is some unholy act that needs an ibuprofen pentagram on the counter for it to work.

When you were retail, did you honestly never have patients walk up expecting you to have a prescription that you'd never received?
That's a multiple times a day thing around these here parts

The current quote chain is based on OP mentioning unclear VM, too.

You should’ve stopped you before the end it! It was perfect.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

You should’ve stopped you before the end it! It was perfect.

LMAO

 

[owlegrad]

LMAO

Lol what a mess of a post.

In case it isn’t clear I was trying to say your post was perfect before the edit. And I wasn’t trying to be clever using unclear English I just didn’t proofread what my phone dictated.

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

Lol what a mess of a post.

In case it isn’t clear I was trying to say your post was perfect before the edit. And I wasn’t trying to be clever using unclear English I just didn’t proofread what my phone dictated.

I think you and I are just on different wavelengths in this thread.

 

[CynicalIntern]

I think you and I are just on different wavelengths in this thread.

Are they literal wavelengths or conceptual wavelengths though. They're very different things.

 

[owlegrad]

Are they literal wavelengths or conceptual wavelengths though. They're very different things.

Half the time wavelengths are below the zero crossing, that is even lower than a standard F grade!

 

[CetiAlphaFive]

Are they literal wavelengths or conceptual wavelengths though. They're very different things.

I only delete 48% of voicemails

 

[CynicalIntern]

I only delete 48% of voicemails

Sounds like you get an F at voicemail deleting.

E: Wait, now I'm confused. If you're bad at voicemail deleting, does that mean your a pro-voicemailer? Sosoo should take notes, this is how you deflect an argument that comes down on you.

 

[owlegrad]

I only delete 48% of voicemails

Is that 48% overall or is that in terms of risk reduction?

 

[owlegrad]