Boostrix-IPV mate

Patient comes in with script for Boostix-IPV .. which is whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus and polio vaccine. Price was about $70.... he yelled at me. Then his mother next to him said she got it for $40....."You overcharged me!"  I showed her the box and said was that what you bought? "I don't remember."

I explained to the patient it has 4 things in there so that's why its a bit more expensive. The one without the polio is about $40.

He goes back to the doctor and changes it to Boostrix which is about $40.

Now what did I do wrong, got yelled out for overcharging a customer? Boostrix-IPV is more expensive than normal Boostrix coz of the polio component. The doctor prescribed a different one from what your mother got last time, I dispensed it. I'm not gonna question the doctor whether or not you need the polio component or not. 

And for the record, no I didn't get an apology.


In some other cases I've had in the past, if the doctor wrote Boostrix-IPV, and I dispensed it, then the patient comes back 2 days later and wants an exchange for the Boostrix because the doctor wrote the wrong one - well then tough cookies, no exchange for fridge items such as vaccines because I can't resell that - how do i know you stored it correctly? its temp-sensitive. and secondly, its not my fault. The fault lies within the doctor. The doctor wrote an incorrect item. We dispense accordingly. Now i know some of these vaccines are quite expensive - what your doctor should've done was think carefully before printing out that prescription from their computer. If you want to recoup your lost money, maybe consider it dealing that with your doctor. You can try and ask him to pay for it. Because the pharmacy is NOT going to suffer the losses for your doctor's mistake. 

They get so upset when I say that lol. But its true! We are not responsible for doctors' mistakes! Some doctors just close their eyes and just pick any random name from their list of medicines without realising what it is. Some doctors often mistaken BOOSTRIX-IPV with BOOSTRIX. That's a prescribing error just like how pharmacists have their dispensing errors. Watch out doctors.