and they do use a lot of automation.. Lot of the smaller pharmacies are going to be kaputt in the future

I was at a health insurance meeting today and mail order is gonna be required one day for maintenance type drugs because the carriers get bulk pricing and it kicks out the middle man little guy (the pharmacist)

I've tried it - and the mail order place IGNORED doctor's orders to "Fill as prescribed" or whatever the medical term is. I was not able to use a generic drug, the doctor wrote the prescription indicating to not change the order but to fill exactly as written.

The mail order place filled with the generic, three month's worth. It took weeks to get the insurance company to allow me to take another prescription to a local pharmacy to get it filled as written - they said I already had the drug. I couldn't get the mail order pharmacy to refund the money paid for the incorrect drug. I complained to the Texas Board of Pharmacy. Three years later, I finally got my refund.

I want all my prescriptions filled locally by a pharmacist licensed in the same state where I live. I want my short term or immediate need prescriptions from the same pharmacy that fill all my other prescriptions so any drug interactions have a better chance to be flagged. I want to be able to carry my prescription in and pick it up an hour later, not get it three weeks later.

Mail order pharmacies cannot do those things for me.

It's like folks who want choice of any doctor or hospital. Cool, but it is going to cost you extra to get that.

And drug program, they tried cutting off some of the more popular pharmacies. It lasted six months until they let those companies back in. It didn't change the premiums in any way either when they limited our choices or when they let us have the choices we had before.

Of course, at the same time, the doctor we've been using for years was NOT included in the network. It did not affect us until last year when we got checkups thinking they would be included in the free preventative care under the ACA. Our doctor thought they were, too.

It turned out that with our insurance company, the checkup are only free if we use "in network" doctors. We're seeing our doctor tomorrow for some things and I will talk to him about this. I'd prefer to stay with him - he knows us, we like him, we like his office and the benefits of his doctors' group. But I cannot afford to pay the full cost for a checkup every year if it is supposed to be covered for nothing.

...a family business, uses an automated dispensing system of some sort. You can see it operating behind the counter. No one appears to have been replaced, but maybe they look a little less frenetic.

nt

has two pharmacies -- an independent one at the grocery store and one at the clinic.

They cost over a million dollars so I don't expect to see many in the retail stores. I know of a small independent (fairly rural) hospital in Indiana has 2 of the devices which I found surprising given the costs.

The machines do allow more prescriptions to be filled and reduce waiting time for people that are buying scripts.

The pharmacist has to ensure correct medication, correct dosage, correct number of pills/capsules/amount of fluid/etc and (I think) check for adverse reactions between dispensed medications.

Anyone care to comment on this ? When I get a tad annoyed at how slow pharmacists are, I remember what I just typed.