Tuesday, April 24, 2012

You Are A Healthcare Professional Committed To Patient Care And Service, At Least Until A Major Drug Chain Fights In Court To Say You Are Not.

So, I've decided this night that maybe I'm a little too cynical. A bit jaded. A little too much of a glass half empty kinda guy. I mean, after all, in addition to being hot and smart and sexy and hot,  I get to spend each and every workday in a position of public trust, backed by a professional infrastructure working hard to spread the word of the important things I do. For example, let's take a look at the website of major pharmacy player Rite Aid, a pillar of the pharmacy power structure:
CAMP HILL, PA (September 28, 2010) – To celebrate American Pharmacists Month, this October Rite Aid is asking patients to vote for their Favorite Pharmacist by sharing stories of extraordinary service and telling what makes their pharmacist special. The program, now in its seventh year, was designed to honor Rite Aid pharmacists for their commitment to patient care and service.

Well now don't those words from a Rite Aid press release just warm your heart.....makes me all warm and fuzzy that statement right from the corporate PR office does. It really seems important to them to let us know of their commitment to patient care.

  “Our pharmacists provide outstanding patient care every day, whether they’re counseling patients on medications, administering immunizations or helping them manage a new or difficult disease." 

I'm sorry......I'm just.....choking up a little here. I mean, reading of Rite Aid's outstanding patient care, in words that were written by Rite Aid itself, it just....takes me to that Rockwellian world of community, of caring, of people at their best and smiling pharmacists found on APhA magazine covers. What a wonderful feeling.......

Patients must be really important to Rite Aid.

"Additionally, because we must determine whether an individual who obtains pharmacy records from a pharmacy is a "patient" and whether the pharmacy is a "health care provider" ...

Those words came from lawyers, who are nothing like pharmacists. They are mean and nasty and would not hesitate to turn on one of their clients if the money was right. Leave it to the lawyers to harsh on Rite Aid's mellow. Just like the words above say, they drug Rite Aid into court to decide whether the people it serves are "patients" or "customers," a whole legal case turned on this definition, and Rite Aid fought like hell.......

....to make sure they were known as "customers." I am not making this up. The company poured its time and resources into making sure that it was crystal clear that the people who every day come in contact with its pharmacists ARE NOT patients.

Which kinda makes that press release of theirs smell a lot like bullshit.

The case was David M. Landay and Patberg Carmondy & Ging v. Rite Aid, and it all started when someone at Rite Aid got the bright idea that they should charge a $50 dollar fee for reproducing pharmacy records. Some lawyer types, however, saw this in Pennsylvania law...

 (1) A patient or his designee, including his attorney, shall have  the right of access to his medical charts and records and to obtain photocopies of the same, without the use of a subpoena  duces tecum, for his own use.  A health care provider or facility  shall not charge a patient or his designee, including his attorney,  a fee in excess of the amounts set forth in section 6152(a)(2)(i)

...caught the scent of class-action money and got their lawsuit on. In the opening round of trial action, Rite Aid employed a very complex and nuanced legal defense, which when one cuts through all the legalese, can be summed up something like this:

"THEY'RE NOT PATIENTS!!!!! THEY'RE CUSTOMERS!! THE LAW SAYS YOU CAN ONLY LIMIT FEES ON PATIENTS SEEKING TO ACCESS THEIR MEDICAL RECORDS!!! THEREFORE WE CAN CHARGE THEM WHATEVER WE WANT!!!! 
But um..... if they were patients, we would be committed to providing outstanding patient care."   

The original trial court agreed, stating, and again I'm paraphrasing here,

"Rite Aid, you are correct. Your forceful and unwavering arguments have convinced us that people using your pharmacies are never to be called patients. After all, who would know the pharmacy business better than a corporation that runs 4700 drugstores? Customers they are, and never shall they be referred to patients again!!"

"Yay!" said Rite Aid.

"This isn't over." said the lawyers on the other side. "if it's the last thing we do, we, members of the most despised and loathsome profession in society, will ensure that people who utilize pharmacy services shall be referred to patients, in order to correctly reflect the realities of 21st century healthcare."

"You're wrong" said Rite Aid. "We have never seen a patient come into a single one of our stores. But if that day ever comes, we will be very committed to their care and service"

An appeals court then looked over both side's arguments and decided Rite Aid was wrong. A court of law  declared on March 23 that as far as it was concerned, pharmacy patrons were to be defined as patients, putting an end to Rite Aid's two year struggle, at what I'd bet was a rather sizable expense, to make sure the people it serves were never.....ever....to be referred to as "patients"

In case you're missing this, it was the lawyers who fought to implement the modern vision of pharmacy, over the strenuous objections of one of the county's largest pharmacy operators.

Which means I was wrong. I've actually decided... I'm pretty much the right amount of cynical after all.

 A big thank you to the alert reader who tipped me to the story.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Free Market Medicine Wins Yet Again.

NEW YORK-  In a stunning defeat for a health care system that promises to cover every citizen at a cost but a fraction of that spent by its neighbor to the south, Canadian drugstore chain Jean Coutu Group cut its losses today on an investment made in American chain Rite Aid Corp. five years ago. 

"Fuck these losers" said CEO and president Fran Coutu as she pressed a button to execute the trade in which 56,000,000 shares of the ailing pillar of American health care were dumped. "I should have done this long ago."

The Jean Coutu Group, which runs 392 stores that somehow survive under the yoke of socialized medicine, earned $182 million dollars Canadian in its last fiscal year, while paying a dividend of 22 cents a share, thereby illustrating the crippling effects of operating under government mandated health care, which include profits, rising revenues, positive return on investments, and people not declaring bankruptcy after having a heart attack.

On this side of the border, Rite Aid lost $564,872,000 last year, somehow unable to coax more dollars from the 50 million Americans with no health insurance.

"We're not sure what we'll do with the piles of money we have lying around" Coutu said in a statement after taking a $290 million loss on its bet on the American way of healthcare. "Maybe buy some travel insurance. I have a trip scheduled to Miami next month and I fear what might happen if I broke my arm or something."

Experts interviewed after the sale pointed out that, in case you missed it, a drugstore chain operates in an environment of socialized medicine and makes a healthy profit. They also added that you probably wouldn't notice or remember, no matter how many times you were told.

Reached for comment, you blathered something about Obamacare that didn't make any sense and were ignoring chest pains, as you really don't need any more bills this month.