Last week for whatever reason a big chain department store pharmacy (that a lot of patients use) decided to launch a fax bombardment my way. These were followed up by e-renewal requests as well. All of these regarding one patient with the same renewal request over and over. Unfortunately it ended up totaling about 11 messages in 8 days. I had responded to the first auto refill request with a denial. It's happened before with other patients but not so much.
Next thing you know (2 minutes later) I get another fax with the same refill request. Well I had just finished my cup of coffee and I wasn't going to take it any more! I proceeded to print on the fax in 120 font, "please see first response" and also attached a copy of their first request that I had written on and sent it back (Updox made this easy). Over the next few days, every time I got the same refill request, I would attach all previous faxes. I kept writing in large font different things like "please see attached response #1 and #2 " etc. I also included a page Updox adds which gives you the time and date you sent the fax.
This went on a few times and I started laughing imagining the pharmacist saying "what the #%$&^ is going on with this guy?". After the 4th fax, I called and spoke to the head pharmacist. Of course she knew what I was calling about and apologized "won't happen again"...right. Advised her if her machines continued to waste our staff time, we would advise our patients to go elsewhere.
Still the faxes & messages continued the come in. At the end of the last day I printed all 11 refill requests with everything I had responded with. I drove down to the store (I shop there too) and asked to speak to the head pharmacist. She came out and slowly I started counting out loud with every page I set down on the counter, "one, two, three....". After the first page I set down, she knew who I was and she started apologizing again, but I kept going. When I got to the last piece of paper, I said "I'm waving the white flag, what do you want me to do? This is getting ridiculous".
I kindly told her I didn't want any more fax refill requests coming to our office. She said she'd see to it and would be contacting corporate to find out what's going on. I was very nice about it and wasn't being mean and we both laughed. I told her it wasn't her fault but that something had to be fixed and I felt I needed to get my point across.
The next morning no faxes, I was surprised. Then about noon came the next one. In the biggest font that would fit on the page, I wrote "REALLY????". That was all I wrote and faxed it back. It's been a few days now and haven't received any faxes from them. (Wonder how long this will last?)
