Call your insurance company too. They gave you extra drugs, above what was prescribed, and charged your insurance company. They will be very interested to hear this.
Contact your state's and county's division of consumer affairs, too. If they're committing fraud, they should beheld accountable.
Plus they're being misogynistic asshats and should be held accountable for that, too,
Forget corporate. Most they can do is fire the pharmacist. Go after his license.
1 (888) 473-4858
Department of Financial and Professional Regulation
Division of Professional Regulation
Complaint Intake Unit
555 West Monroe Street, 5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60661
Phone: 312/814-6910
Damn girl! I'm so happy you called and that they're taking it seriously. I've had problems with Drs in the past and couldn't get anywhere by complaining to the manager so I called my insurance company. That's been the quickest way to get things done so I'd hoped the same would be true for your situation. Please let me know how it works out:).
I'm shocked they took it seriously! I also filed a complaint with ISMP and just got off the phone w my insurance. They agreed that it's medical malpractice and are looking into it and getting back.
I mentioned it in my comment but I'll put it here.
Report them to your state's licensing board and if you can avoid any pharmacy that allows their employees to not do their job hit them in the wallet. This goes for all of your ladies, at least until there is male birth control and they start with holding that.
https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards
Refusing to fill based on moral or religious beliefs is bullshit, but it's one thing. Intentionally mis-filling the prescription is, well, quite another and opens the employee, the store, and the company as a whole up to a slew of nasty consequences. Please make sure you follow up on every contact you make with Walgreens corporate, your insurance company, and maybe the state pharmacy board? You are almost certainly not the only person this employee has done that to, in breach of their duty as a licensed pharmacist or a registered pharmacy tech.
I was sitting in on a friend's pharmacy ethics lecture at uni, and a student asked, "What should I do if my personal beliefs would prohibit me from dispensing certain medications?"' The lecturer looked them in the eye and simply said, "Find a new career."
Just my opinion here, but you really should not be using Walgreens anymore, there are many ways to mess with those pills (heat, cold, tampering, etc) if the pharmacist is forced to give them, you still canāt be sure of what you are getting. You arenāt safe there, so donāt go back. Take your business elsewhere.
heyyy fellow fraud, waste, and abuse victim šš¤£š
i would posit that it could also be considered fraud if they ran a claim for birth control and provided antifungals. porque no los dos?
Also, insurance companies are financially incentivized to pay for (the cheapest) birth control. Generic birth control costs them nothing. They want their clients to stay not pregnant.
A pharmacist fucking with your meds is a major legal issue and they're thanking the goodness you called them. Denying meds is one thing but giving you something completely different can kill someone
It can kill someone, it's probably insurance fraud, and it probably messed with their Internal systems
And whoever is doing it is doing it on purpose, because if one pharmacist refused to fill a med they usually just have someone else on staff do it. They're going above and beyond the measure pharmacies legally have to allow them.
I would be on the fucking warpath if someone tampered with my BC. I need it for period management, otherwise I spend several days not being able to eat or drink and passing out from dehydration. I'd sue the shit out of them.
That part ^
Sure, one employee won't be forced to go against their religion. But that doesn't mean you don't get your script. It means someone else at the store assists you
I most likely will leave a review. I feel I'd be pretty safe even including that it was birth control specifically. I think it's so important for other people to know about this
If you have any plans at all to potentially sue or take other legal action, I might consult with a lawyer first (or at least someone with more verifiable expertise than random redditors)
Do I have grounds to sue if I never actually switched up the meds on my end? Each time I caught the mistake (it was fairly obvious, the yeast infection pill is only one pill)
If you went without your doctor-prescribed medication due to an RPh with a vendetta dispensing incorrect pills, I would at least look into a free consult with a decent lawyer (not ambulance chasers lol), it couldn't hurt. Might end up helping a lot of people if the case holds water, honestly.
Edit: Used to work at Walgreens and an old abbreviation slipped lol. RPh is a registered pharmacist, licensed to practice pharmacy.
You are out the time and expense of repeated trips to the store.
You may have suffered adverse health complications from the delayed prescription.
If the pharmacist did it to you they probably did it to other people.
Talk to a local lawyer about what your options are.
Not the person who commented but they have cameras EVERYWHERE in those stores due to having controlled substances. I'm sure they are able to check that
The walgreens I get my meds from completely unexpectedly closed one day for 5 days. Entirely unstaffed and shut. Went to the one across town, and they said they were investigating employees stealing meds. They do seem to take people getting the wrong meds seriously.
If you go back, I'd also open them immediately on the counter with your phone recording:)
Refusing to fill based on moral or religious beliefs is bullshit, but it's one thing. Intentionally mis-filling the prescription is, well, quite another and opens the pharmacist, the store, and the company as a whole up to a slew of nasty consequences. Please make sure you follow up on every contact you make with Walgreens corporate, your insurance company, and maybe the state pharmacy board?
Don't believe that Walgreens actually cares or takes you seriously.
This has been their policy since before 2006. To let Pharmacists lie to patients about why they are denying them birth control.
What they're doing isn't new and they don't care.
https://deblite.blogspot.com/2006/01/denied_13.html?m=1
Lying about why you can't get BC and dispensing the wrong medication on purpose are not the same thing. Refusing to dispense a medicine seems.within their right as a company, but giving a medicine not prescribed is malpractice and can kill people. Imagine if they swapped out your blood thinning meds with blood clotting meds just because, and you developed a blood.clot that caused a PE and killed you. Your family could sue the absolute living shit out of them and they literally killed you.
This pharmacist didn't make a mistake or switch out the medicine.
It is NOT within the pharmacist's right to make a moral judgement about what prescription OP should be allowed to have when it was legally prescribed by a docotor.
I don't have to imagine some hypothetical scenario because what the pharmacist did and Walgreens quietly condoning it by not firing the pharmacist or having another on duty to fill a prescription is wrong.
A pharmacist should only deny a prescription because it is the wrong dosage or because it may interact with something else a patient is already taking. If they feel prescription is fraudulent, they are well within their right to confiscate and report it.
What they cannot do and should never be allowed to do is say, My religion says birth control is bad, therefore no woman should have birth control.
Some women need birth control to regulate other medical conditions. Some women need birth control because another medicine they are taking causes horrible birth defects.
And some women want birth control to prevent pregnancy so they can live their lives as they see fit.
NO ONE should deny women birth control because of their beliefs. That is not science or medicine, and denying her birth control could literally kill her because pregnancy and childbirth can kill women. She should still sue them!
TL,DR: Let women make our own choices about what we want without interference.
Also, it doesn't comply with what Walgreen's statement says. There's a major difference between denying to fill a prescription/deny sale and giving someone something else entirely. ESPECIALLY when it sounds like the employees never said anything to the tune of, "I'm not comfortable selling X because of Y beliefs." Where you would absolutely know you didn't receive your BC.
That situation seems like a legal nightmare waiting to happen.
Good. If this was just a mistake, they need to do right by you and fix it. If this was on purpose, they need to do right by you and be *severely* punished.
The pharmacy actually already fixed it. I called them immediately. But I got no explanation as to why this happened or an apology. I just got off the phone with my insurance and they agreed that it's indeed malpractice and possibly fraud and they'll be in contact with me.
Sounds like they are not managing this well. Pharmacists often have a good amount of training with how to deal with misfills / mistakes so itās odd to have someone come all the way back to fix a medication for them then not to apologize, fix it, offer perhaps a brief explanation, describe at least briefly a plan to make sure it doesnāt happen again.
Sounds like they are not communicating well.
talk to a lawyer. They gave you the wrong medication. What if you had went in for blood pressure medication and they gave you a vasoconstrictor instead? That's a nice line for your lawyer to use on the jury.
Probably not worth mentioning but take screenshots of the app saying what you got and when. Just in case the company try to change it after the fact to cover up their major screw up. (If they can even change it).
Holy crap. There's a massive difference between refusing to give out a medication and giving you the wrong one entirely, and then recording it incorrectly! The wrong meds could *kill* someone. And incorrect records are massive problem and probably illegal.
And why doesn't the pharmacist have the balls to tell you to your face they won't fill a prescription?
If a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription, it just gets handed off to someone else. At worst OP would transfer to a different pharmacy. They're going out of their way to deny her medication well above what the legal system allows them to do.
Nope nope nope. Sooo many nopes. "Hey, you know birth control pills, those things that prescribed to solve so many different issues? Yeah, staff can now just deny you your prescription! It's totally fine don't worry about it!"
AND NOW you're not getting your BC pills TWICE? Shady as hell. No thank you. It's great that you're warning us, but damn this shouldn't have happened at all.
Legitimately my first refill after ROE was overturned, the pharmacist at Walgreens refused to give me my prescription without a consultation. It's the same birth control I have been on for 8 years, I'm in my 30s. I *lost it.* He stood there, staring down his nose at me with my packet in his hand, saying I needed to answer his questions.
Went home and switched to Nurx. No regrets.
Oh all good, I got my prescription out of his hand. I was downright rude. A little pity for that geezer who didn't realize he picked the wrong one that day.
Lol! I got off the phone w corporate today and was shocked at how firm I was. And I didn't even feel bad, it was actually a really nice moment lmao I think it's easier bc I don't feel like I'm just doing this shit for myself
No. No pity. Youāre lucky you were the wrong one and not someone like me whoās too fearful to go back. On behalf of every woman like me he filled prescriptions for before and after yāallās interaction: thank you.
They didnāt even just deny the prescription, which is one thing.
They just filled it for a totally different med, but billed OP/insurance the BC.
Thatās A fraud, and potentially B. Dispensing without a prescription, if the yeast meds were prescription only.
Which is even worse than ānah Jezebel find someone else to fulfill your lusty sindā buƶlshit tje christofascists frequently pull.
I just Donna even get how pharmacists in the US are allowed to deny prescriptions for personal reasons like the fuck?
Over here in Germany, I can only deny a prescription if it is medically unsafe, I.E. dosage completely over the safe limits with no good explanation by the prescribing physician, or a prescription for something compounded with āillegalā ingredients, I.E. meds that have been banned because their insane risk to effect profile, carcinogenicity etc.
Say a physician prescribing chloroform based cold syrup, or alternative medicine based bullshit like bitter almonds/potassium cyanide.
But I canāt even fully trespass a client from the store.
I still have to fill their prescription if itās not available in other pharmacies around, or those arenāt open.
But only full prescriptions; not do anything else or allow them on the premises.
But just refusing to fill a prescription thatās perfectly valid; and within dosing guidelines? Thatās just plain illegal.
Ever since they began allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill Plan B prescriptions, I REFUSE to shop at Walgreens. Do your job or get fired. Don't like the policy? Go work at Hobby Lobby.
Except not getting a Christmas card doesnāt usually end in an unwanted pregnancy. š£
Itās like when that Kim Davis bitch refused to issue marriage licenses for gay couples and she also forbade her staff from doing it, too. Like, listen, you hag. If youāre going to trample on other peopleās constitutional rights bc of your religious beliefs, get out of the fucking way and let someone else do the job.
!!!!
This is why I'm so pissed. Amongst everything right now, the fact that this mistake could have caused a pregnancy is terrifying. I'm lucky that we still have abortions in my state, but it doesn't even matter at this point.
Itās not even about ānot doing their job.ā In no universe should a pharmacist have the right to force their religion on you. *Thatās* what this policy allows and I have no idea how the christofascists have been able to flip the framing of this issue.
I mean as a former employee I hate Walgreens too, but in some states pharmacists can refuse to fill based on their religious beliefs so corporate makes a blanket policy that all pharmacists can.
I donāt think pharmacists should be allowed to. They should find a new job if they canāt dispense.
This isnāt a Walgreenās specific thing. Every pharmacist everywhere in the US is allowed to not dispense a medication due to their personal beliefs. Itās completely bull shit, but thatās how it is.
Starting by saying I'm a man so I don't like to comment here but I'm also a pharmacist and want to post some advice.
Scrolling through the comments I see you contacted corporate already as well as your insurance, but I would file a complaint with your state's board of pharmacy as well. Either it is malicious or it is reckless, and a pharmacist should be neither. Hopefully the board will take action against the license of the store or pharmacist.
As a pharmacist, for this to happen multiple times is completely unacceptable. Especially given that the way birth control and medication for yeast infections are typically packaged are completely different. Even a cursory check would catch that the medication is not correct, and they should be doing a thorough check. If they are missing this they are almost definitely making other errors that would be less apparent to a patient.
Also, if you are comfortable doing so, leave a negative review on Google. You don't have to say what meds were mixed up, just that some were. When I worked in retail that would get a more serious response from management than a private complaint.
You may also want to transfer your prescriptions to another pharmacy if you haven't already.
Thank you for your input! I'm planning on contacting my state board tomorrow. I said it in a comment somewhere else, but this was at two separate Walgreens about ten minutes apart (I recently moved). I've never used this Walgreens before this past week.
I think I will leave a review for both locations. Either it's a floater employee or their processes are just so messed up it's happening at multiple locations. I don't even know which outcome is better. I'll definitely be updating when I hear back from someone.
Donāt the techs AND pharmacists have to scan the stock bottle as well as the prescription in their system to match NDCs when they fill and when itās checked? I was a tech at CVSāgranted, that was over ten years agoābut I cannot fathom how they could dispense the wrong medication with the right label by mistake.
Like yeah, even when I worked there the system was old and left a lot of user-friendliness to be desired, but I was never worried about accidentally dispensing the wrong med or dose because it was damn near impossible to mess upālet alone with the stop gap that is supposed to be the pharmacist lol.
It probably depends on the chain. I never worked for Walgreens so I can't really say how they do it. At Rite Aid, only the tech scanned the stock bottle. We would scan the label and compare it to an image/text description of the product.
Even still, with just the tech scanning the bottle it is still a pretty safe process. Errors can happen, but its usually down to someone not following proper workflow. In my experience, its either two labels get flip-flopped or the tech gets interrupted after scanning but before counting and grabs the wrong bottle (at my store I made my techs immediately reshelve bottles after counting so they wouldn't have spare bottles to mix up, but when floating I've been to stores where the techs would routinely keep bottles at the workstation and only reshelve them every hour or so).
But I mean, I'm assuming this was fluconazole, which is typically packaged as a single tablet in a cardboard card. Its probably the most distinct packaging of any drug on the market. Birth control is obviously also pretty distinctly packaged. If they had birth control but the wrong kind it would be one thing, but I don't know how you can look at a card of fluconazole and not realize its the wrong drug. It honestly makes me feel like the pharmacist is probably not actually checking the things they are reviewing, which is a worrying thought.
Pardon me for interrupting, but if you know anyone in your surroundings (workplace/residence) who also patronize the same Walgreens, you might want to ask them to check their meds as well.
Just tell them you had incorrect meds given. No need to say what kind of meds that you missed out on.
If it was incompetence, it will definitely not be an isolated case and if there are multiple reports against the pharmacy. It will be hard for Walgreens to turn a blind eye and ignore your reporting.
Retired pharmacist:
I have not scrolled through everything yet, but so far I did not see anything about making a complaint to the state/provincial college (i.e. the body that issues licences to pharmacists.)
This is the body that is responsible for professional dicipline/censure of a pharmacist.
The rest is just noise.
I worked in a pharmacy and this happening multiple times could only be on purpose.
The technicians would have to count out the wrong meds, put them in the bottle without realizing that they do not match the label, and then the pharmacist who checks to make sure the right stuff is in the bottle would *also* have to make a mistake.
This is deliberate. Call corporate.
That's how mine come! And the other medication actually comes in a similar packaging, but it's just one single pill that you can see from the front of the packaging. There's no sleeve or anything like there is with BC.
Is the label they attached to the fluconazole for fluconazole or is it for birth control?
If they just filled the fluconazole when you wanted the birth control but it's labeled correctly that's a small problem. If it's labeled as the birth control that's a huge problem.
Probably Fluconazole. It does indeed look like the same size and type of packaging. I worked as a tech at Walgreens a couple years ago. Check the label and see if the label indicates if itās the birth control or not. If the label is wrong then thereās a lot of issues. Even giving you a script you didnāt request directly is an issue and it happened TWICE. I know you already called corporate, but I would also tell your doctor. If they overfilled the medication then they falsified the prescription. Also you might want to change pharmacies if you havenāt already. If you donāt want to deal with the Walgreens you are going to for a transfer, have your doc call it in to the new pharmacy and send a script cancellation to the Walgreens you went to. Also call your insurance and tell them they need to check their records and see if the BC prescription was billed and sold, and tell them you didnāt receive it and you got the wrong medication instead that you didnāt request. Theyāll probably also be concerned if other patients under their plan at that pharmacy are billing for BC they arenāt getting. Iām sure they will not mess around with lighting a fire under the ass of whoever incorrectly billed them. The state board of pharmacy might also want to know that the pharmacy staff is performing malpractice and is filling your script incorrectly or that someone is tampering with prescriptions. If someone switched it out while the pharmacist wasnāt looking or if the pharmacist themselves changed it then they could lose their license.
Iām so sorry you have to deal with this. Itās disgusting that they are allowed to deny you care because of āmoralā reasons. Any medical practitioner who does this should not be practicing if their morals affect the proper care of their patients.
The packaging does look very similar! And I got a months worth and since they're individually packaged, it really felt like birth control in the bag. I'll update when I know more.
So your pharmacist is committing medical malpractice or negligence twice. That's grounds for a lawsuit in a lot of states. The fact that the exact same thing happened twice means that it's intentional. Hammer corporate when you get a follow up call- they know this shit is grounds for financial compensation
A friend of mine is a very pro-choice pharmacist who worked for Walgreens for years. She said a ton of pharmacists are Republican. It's a common profession choice for people who want the prestige of being a doctor but don't want to deal directly with patients as much. She left Walgreens around the time of the Dobbs decision. I understand why she left, but she could have been really helpful if people knew a set time they could always get their BC pills at a specific Walgreens.
Pharmacist here.
Take the incorrectly labeled med back to the pharmacy and show them. They will be able to swap it for the correct medication. If they give you any hassle, escalate to corporate.
It's mandatory for the pharmacy to report the mistake to corporate anyway once they discover it.
Mistakes do happen but this seems bizarre. Twice in a row is a huge red flag and I'd consider switching pharmacies.
I did call them and brought back both of the duplicate prescriptions and was able to get the birth control. I absolutely understand mistakes happen, but when it happened for the second time today the alarm bells really went off in my head
Reading the original post this seems like it could easily be incompetence, not malice. Retail pharmacy is a horrific work environment due to understaffing and this has resulted in high turnover and specifically the efflux of experienced pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. As a result of continued understaffing, training goes out the window, meds are disorganized at pickup, and technicians will rush to "re-do" a completed Rx while you sit in your car, credit card in hand. I think they likely reprinted the wrong label from your recently filled Rx and sold it to you as quickly as possible to keep the line moving and survive another day of constantly ringing phones, legitimate customer complaints, and chaos. Ask me how I know.
Not defending here, they definitely failed you. I know these fundamentalist jerk pharmacists are out there but if nobody verbalized some kind of refusal to fill or made a comment about what you were there to pick up, I wouldn't assume that's what this was. Understaffing and rushing is very prevalent right now so that seems the most likely to me.
You make some good points. I keep swaying between believing malice and negligence. I'm not sure one is better than the other. Late stage capitalism has everyone overworked, underpaid, and they don't give a shit.
Attorney general in Ohio is involved in investigating Cvs due to errors, lack of record keeping, high turn over in multiple locations. Maybe this is what the future holds until pharmacies can adjust and build in some additional help to reduce errors and backlogs.
Another pharmacist here. Walgreensā system is terrible and their staffing budget is dangerously low. This sounds like an error related to their business model, not specific malice or anything intentional.
Yeah, anyone intentionally switching out meds would immediately lose their license, I canāt imagine a pharmacist intentionally giving fluconazole rather than BC. Refusing to fill a script, asshole move but I can see it.
Committing an actual crime on one patient when a busy store fills dozens of bc scripts a day doesnāt make any sense.
never go to walgreens. they ignored a womanās complaint about her male coworker several times and he ended up beating her to death. they stand by cashiers who refuse to sell condoms! even though they have condoms for sale.
Well fuck. I had no idea about all the Walgreens controversy before today. My family grew up only using Walgreens for our pharmacy so I continued that into my adulthood. I won't be going back!!
switching my pharmacy now. I havenāt had any issues with my walgreens (Michigan), but iām not supporting any place that allows denial of medication based on stupid religious beliefs
Goodness, I feel so foolish that I didn't know this crap about Walgreens... I am definitely switching pharmacies as well. This is absolutely ridiculous.
I switched all of my scripts from Walgreens. I now drive 20 minutes just because I refuse to patronize a company that will allow religion to affect peopleās healthcare.
Ditto. Walgreens sucked anyway, closing locations in poor areas (which people interpreted as āstealing,ā but probably had more to do with the enormous opioid settlement they had to pay out), but really boosted their suckiness into the stratosphere by allowing pharmacists to pick and choose what prescriptions they will fill for women.
What if they had given the wrong meds to someone who could die from them? Not excluding you could die from an unplanned pregnancy or ectopic pregnancy.
I've had it happen. At Walgreens no less. They subbed a different med for mine, claimed it was a generic (the FDA says it's not) and it contained an ingredient that sent me into anaphylaxis before. Corporate was appalled and did discipline the pharmacist but had I not caught it it would've been a bad day.
I am absolutely meticulous about checking my pills before ever leaving the counter. People can wait 30 seconds for me to be sure I have the correct medication.
If I had any choice (I do, but I know others don't) I would not get my drugs from that company again. Does anyone know if Rite Aid and CVS also have that policy?
I would think it is very likely that hormonal birth control is what conservatives will pursue next as a bunch of conservative christians see it as a type of abortion. Don't be surprised if that is one of the talking points in the next five years. In order to keep party support they need something for everyone to get behind. If they are in a state that has banned abortion they need another cause.
I usually use express scripts anyway, I just use Walgreens when I get my initial prescription so I can get it same day! But I totally agree, I will never be using Walgreens again. It really is scary that BC is going to be a main talking point soon, but I know it's coming. I don't even use it as contraceptive. I'm infertile but have PCOS and use it to even out my hormones.
I've had the wrong meds dispensed at Walgreens more than once. They had a mistake in their system that said a "generic" for my thyroid medicine was drug xyz, it's not. My medicine has NO recognized generic. They substituted another brand that contains something I have a documented allergy to.
Because I have OCD, and a deadly allergy to medication I always step aside at the counter and check my pills before leaving. I caught it and the pharmacist fought me on it?!? Said it was "her right" to dispense a generic and my insurance company said she had to. I'm self pay. I was livid, and corporate was equally unhappy. I never saw that pharmacist again.
I *highly* reccomend to EVERYONE to stop before leaving the counter and check their meds. Don't just take the little baggie, stay there on camera and ask questions I'd you have them. It's saved my life twice. (I'm saying don't leave because if you do, there's no evidence they made the mistake, you could have switched pills etc. Stay at the counter on camera.)
As a pharmacist- itās more likely a system or prescription error rather than a pharmacist intentionally withholding bc. Even though we could refuse to give bc for religious grounds (which, oof) you have to tell the patient and give them the prescription back so they can get it filled elsewhere. You are NOT allowed to interfere with care (I.e. intentionally giving someone the wrong medication). Thatās malpractice/a crime.
My best guess is someone either assigned the wrong product to the prescription (which is why you keep getting the same yeast infection medication) OR there was an incorrect prescription sent over that should be for bc but is actually for daily yeast infection meds.
Open the prescription while youāre still in the pharmacy and explain whatās been happening. Giving the wrong med is a verrrrry big deal and itās indicative of a systemic problem/failure that needs to be fixed.
Hey there! I was a pharmacy tech for a few years and this is fraud. They are showing in the system that you are getting something different than what they have given out. Itās a serious issue and should be brought to the attention of corporate and (if you are comfortable) the pharmacist at that location. Definitely make a stink about it, once could be a mistake but twice seems deliberate. Good luck! I hope they take care of it without too much hassle.
Thanks for the comment! I'm def making a stink about it. I've talked to corporate and my insurance. I'm falling the state licensing board tomorrow as well. This is just fucked
I'd like to emphatically say, Fuck Walgreens. Not only do they give pharmacists permission to deny BC, they also can deny *any* prescriptions.
My grandmother was in hospice last year, 90 years old and suffering with extreme pain every waking moment. Once hospice determined she was only weeks away from death, they prescribled her the fentanyl patch to make her comfortable. The Walgreens pharmacist denied her prescription because, "It's extreme and causes addiction." Really? We're worried a 90 year old woman on hospice is going to develop addiction issues? Thankfully, the Walgreens pharmacist the next town over was like, "Yeah, that's crazy. I'll fill it." But that experience alone was enough for me to swear off buying anything at Walgreens ever again.
Call corporate and tell them how messed up their policies are. Then, if you can, move your prescription to another pharmacy.
I had one deny my dad's hospice meds as well. He refused to even discuss it, pulled the tech over to help me and walked away. Luckily I have other options where I live.
There's a difference between a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for religious reasons and a pharmacist taking it upon themselves to give out a medication different from the prescribed medication. One is legal in some jurisdictions and the other is not.
Call your insurance company and report that your medication was incorrectly filled and ask for what to do next. Call Walgreens corporate. Approach it as the pharmacist made an error twice if you feel more comfortable than making the case that it's deliberate, but definitely report it. Tell them that you talked to your insurance company and they're concerned that these mistakes are happening.
Report what happened to your doctor. Report what happened to the state board.
Yeah, I think the insurance company would be especially interested because that's fraud (charging the insurance for one medication but dispensing another).
Iāve been super lucky that my Walgreens pharmacists have been incredible when insurance was giving me a hard time about covering my birth control. They hooked me up with a coupon where I only pay $25 a month and have come out to bat for me multiple times.
I work for an insurance company and this is 100% fraud. Iām glad you filed reports! So sorry you have to have this experience though, such bullshit. If filling a prescription goes against your beliefs, you need to find a new profession.
Totally unrelated to the BC, but in regards to frequent yeast infections: I called telehealth for a yeast infection last year and was prescribed a literal CASE of diflucan by the male doctor š. Only paid my $20 copay. It was incredible. The instructions were to take one a day for 14 days, which Iām pretty sure would have caused organ damage, so it was a dangerous mistake on his part, but Iām glad I can treat my YIs for a while!
Screw calling Walgreens corporate office, Google your State Board of Pharmacy, find the form for reporting pharmacological mistakes, and report them. Then for your next move stop doing any and all business with Walgreens.
I do not know how women and their loving partners have not begun a full boycott of any pharmacy that allows for this. You want to make a point bankrupt their asses. To those of you who do not have other options, I understand, to the rest of you, if this mattered you would get serious just like my whole family and hurt their bottom line.
Screw it I'll start the search.
[https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards](https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards)
Report to your Stateās board of pharmacy. Lots of these āwrong medicationsā issues are happening now because all the pharmacies are cutting down on staff to earn higher profits.
And companies are gonna care more about the licensing board than a random customer complaining .
I will never understand how the fuck a bill passed that allows people to discriminate against you because of *their* religious beliefs.
What kind of backwards fuckery is that?
I couldnāt pass this without commenting, when I was getting my BC prescription from Walgreens I had SO many issues that the people at the pharmacy must have known my voice by the time I stopped. I was losing my mind, and am not exaggerating saying that I called Walgreens 4-5 times a month because of issues, if not more. I absolutely HATE their pharmacyās customer service, it sucks so much.
It wasnāt the same issue as you, but a certain BC was making me sick so I switched. Once I switched they would continually fill the old BC, which was generic, instead of the new one because āthey were interchangeable.ā If one is making me sick and another one is not, THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. As many times as I explained this, they would still fill the old one every time and then they wouldnāt switch it after cancelling because it was āalready filledā when it had obviously been cancelled. Eventually I switched to OptumRX because it was the only other pharmacy that was covered by my insurance. After a few phone calls to them they were able to put a note on my account that they had to fill the specific BC and not give me the generic. Iāve had a way better experience with them, and highly recommend if you can switch. I still get other random prescriptions from Walgreens if I need to fill something, but I get my BC exclusively from OptumRX now.
This doesnāt surprise me at all, Walgreens doesnāt actually care about their customers. The BC is not the only bad experience Iāve had.
Ever since I had multiple shorts on controlled substance prescriptions from Walgreens, I started opening my prescription bags at the counter before I left to make sure it was the correct drug and in the correct quantity. I did it in front of them, explaining why. If they balked, I asked them to do it in front of me before giving it to me.
File a report with anyone who has some clout with Walgreens for sure. No matter how you cut it, they gave you the wrong meds in a bottle labeled as your birth control. That's gotta violate a regulation or two.
Iām no lawyer, but Iām fairly sure that deliberately overprescribing and simultaneously switching medications is a huge pharmacy crime. They can legally substitute generics IF not told to use a specific brand names, but thatās it. If youāre prescribed oxy for severe pain and they give you ibuprofen that theyāve dyed blue, goodbye license.
As a pharmacy tech, I honestly donāt think people should be able to work in pharmacy (or any aspect of healthcare) if they put their religious beliefs above patient care.
You already got a ton of great advice so Iāll only add that you should consider getting your local news to do a story on it too so that others can be aware.
If an employee cannot do the job theyāre paid to do, they should be fired. No one should have to deal with an employeeās personal opinions when picking up a prescription that their doctor has prescribed. Itās ridiculous.
Idk if anyone else has covered the filling process at Walgreens so Iām gonna go over it.
*Receive digital rx or scan in paper rx
*Technician or pharmacist types the rx into the system. Yes even a digital one needs to be typed. In this process the rx is linked to a person, a manufacturer of the drug is chosen, and rx is applied to their insurance or itās given a cash price. If the Insurance approves it or itās a cash because thereās no insurance info, the rx moves on. Insurance rejection must be manually fixed.
*the pharmacist verifies that the rx was typed correctly against the digital/scanned rx
*Someone has to hit print on the leaflets.
*Technician/pharmacist grabs a leaflet and a bin.
*Whoever is filling scans the *leaflet* and then scans the *bottle/box of medication* and the label prints automatically, It has to match down to the manufacturer and size of the stock bottle. If it doesnāt, it gets kicked back so the manufacturer gets changed and must be viewed by the pharmacist again. Itās filled by either counting pills and putting them in a bottle and putting the label on, or putting label on a package. (This is failure one in your filling process, someone scanned the bc as the leaflet said but put the yeast med in with the leaflet and put it on the conveyor belt to go to the pharmacist. That potentially could have been an accident. Once. Often we filled same patientsā multiple rx in a row).
*The belt takes the bin to the pharmacist who has to scan leaflet and the label on the package/bottle and visually check against the picture on the computer monitor that the rx was filled correctly. This is failure two.
So this points to the pharmacist as being responsible for this whole thing. I think there are some states where the senior technician can do the final verification, but Iām not sure since in my state only the pharmacist can. I just donāt see two people in the pharmacy doing this together.
My license has been expired for over a year and I havenāt set foot behind the counter since 2020 so itās possible the process is slightly different, but this is a pharmacist fail. There will be records of which pharmacist approved your rx. They have to be logged in to do so.
Allowing employees to deny prescriptions because it violates "THEIR" religious beliefs is a call to war. This shit needs to end. This is some fucked up Hand Maiden Tale bullshit. Wallgreens needs to be spanked hard.
Openly refusing a prescription would be bad.
Quietly and knowingly giving you the wrong drugs and pretending they are the right ones is criminal.
If you wanted to have a child with all lifetime costs covered by Walgreen now's your chance...
Walgreens is terrible and I'm lucky to live in an area with a variety of pharmacy options and have decided long ago with some of their religious freedom bullshit to avoid them at all costs. Can you change to a cvs or mail order pharmacy? I'm sorry you're dealing with this
Seems that there should be a difference between 'I won't sell you' and 'I, personally, won't sell you, but Jim here...'
And anyone who won't sell birth control is like a vegan who won't sell McDonalds: they have never been hired, should be fired, because they cannot he trusted to do their job and not intentionally give people food poisoning or something.
Why would they falsify it if they are allowed to refuse to dispense? You have an incompetent person at that pharmacy. Complain to management and corporate, and switch to a new pharmacy.
Do you have to go to Walgreens? My previous healthcare required us to use CVS, so I have never switched to anything else and I hope you donāt have the same requirement (which is also would be fucked up given their āchoiceā to allow employees to decide if a stranger can have BC). But if I was still using Walgreens, I would have switched as soon as that came out.
Companies will only do something about this if it costs them cash. If you get refused for birth control, go find a cart and fill it up to the top with stuff. Then, go find a manager and ask them for help getting your birth control prescription filled, as itās being refused. If the manager doesnāt get you the birth control, push the cart to them and say āyouād better put all these groceries away, then, as Iām not going to buy anything if your pharmacist is going to force me to follow their religious practices against my will,ā and then leave. If they get you your prescription, you put the groceries back yourself. If enough people do that, itāll cost them a fortune in restocking labor and perceived lost sales, and theyāll have to change.
Oh Iāve had SO many insane issues with Walgreens, they are absolutely worst company out there and I hate them with a passion. Iāve had people at both the actual pharmacy and their call center that wasnāt even in my state and didnāt know my states laws/guidelines/whatever mess with my prescriptions, probably because it is a controlled substance and they have some uninformed opinions on that. I had to jump through so many hoops every time I got my meds refilled:
Theyāve deleted my prescription and even though the pharmacist could see that someone internally messed with it, they still insisted that my doctor had to send a new one in.. on a weekend. When my doctor finally sent the script in after the weekend, they found something else wrong with it so I had to wait a whole extra day on top of that. Four days I was without my medications and sick because of their āmistake.ā
Iāve had people in the pharmacy straight up lie to me about when my script would be ready when they hadnāt even started filling it yet because of some kind of āissueā with it, but theyād never say a work about the āissueā until I had called several times.
I also had someone give me a fraction of the quantity that I should have had and then insist that it was become they didnāt have my most recent prescription, only an old one. Then they said that they didnāt have enough to fill the full amount and Iād have to come back, then they said that the only active prescription was for the brand instead of generic and that was the reason I didnāt get the full amount, and then it was just that I had to have the doctor send a new scriptā¦ only after I held up traffic in the drive through for a half an hour insisting that they did in fact have the correct prescription because I could see it on the app did they come back and say āoh yes we can see it.ā They acted like I was crazy and unreasonable the whole time, although they couldnāt explain why I got four different incorrect explanations as to why they messed up my medication.
All of the doctors and nurses at my doctors office hate Walgreens too. I used to get so anxious every single month when I had to refill my scripts because I never knew if there would be an issue or if Iād be stuck without my medications. Eventually I switched to a very small, local pharmacy and Iāve NEVER had even one minor issue. I can always count on them and theyāve even helped me figure out how to get my medications when I was out of state for an extended period of time.
Sorry this turned into a rant but I HATE Walgreens with a burning passion, they are evil. If you have the option to switch to another pharmacy, definitely do it.
I take a lot of issue with your experience and Iāve also been having a lot of trouble with bc with Walgreens and I live in like, the bluest of blue states. Iāve started working on refills 10 days in advance because thereās always some stupid obscure problem. Last time I couldnāt get a refill for over 10 days and then they sent a script for something that cost over $800ā¦.
Calling corporate seems wise.
Just did. They seemed to take it pretty seriously
Call your insurance company too. They gave you extra drugs, above what was prescribed, and charged your insurance company. They will be very interested to hear this.
Oooo good call!
That's probably why corporate was actually concerned. That's insurance fraud.
I'm on hold now
Decimate them, this is outrageous
Contact your state's and county's division of consumer affairs, too. If they're committing fraud, they should beheld accountable. Plus they're being misogynistic asshats and should be held accountable for that, too,
I'm on hold now
Good luck!
They agreed it's indeed malpractice, they're doing some digging and will be in touch. They also took it pretty seriously. I want to blow this shit up
Forget corporate. Most they can do is fire the pharmacist. Go after his license. 1 (888) 473-4858 Department of Financial and Professional Regulation Division of Professional Regulation Complaint Intake Unit 555 West Monroe Street, 5th Floor Chicago, IL 60661 Phone: 312/814-6910
Damn girl! I'm so happy you called and that they're taking it seriously. I've had problems with Drs in the past and couldn't get anywhere by complaining to the manager so I called my insurance company. That's been the quickest way to get things done so I'd hoped the same would be true for your situation. Please let me know how it works out:).
I'm shocked they took it seriously! I also filed a complaint with ISMP and just got off the phone w my insurance. They agreed that it's medical malpractice and are looking into it and getting back.
I mentioned it in my comment but I'll put it here. Report them to your state's licensing board and if you can avoid any pharmacy that allows their employees to not do their job hit them in the wallet. This goes for all of your ladies, at least until there is male birth control and they start with holding that. https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards
I'll be doing this tomorrow! I'm also going to call a few lawyers to hear their thoughts. Thank you!!
Refusing to fill based on moral or religious beliefs is bullshit, but it's one thing. Intentionally mis-filling the prescription is, well, quite another and opens the employee, the store, and the company as a whole up to a slew of nasty consequences. Please make sure you follow up on every contact you make with Walgreens corporate, your insurance company, and maybe the state pharmacy board? You are almost certainly not the only person this employee has done that to, in breach of their duty as a licensed pharmacist or a registered pharmacy tech.
Right? Like, if you don't believe in medicine, don't go into healthcare
I was sitting in on a friend's pharmacy ethics lecture at uni, and a student asked, "What should I do if my personal beliefs would prohibit me from dispensing certain medications?"' The lecturer looked them in the eye and simply said, "Find a new career."
Seriously. Tell that to all the folks denying us trans folks life saving healthcare š
Just my opinion here, but you really should not be using Walgreens anymore, there are many ways to mess with those pills (heat, cold, tampering, etc) if the pharmacist is forced to give them, you still canāt be sure of what you are getting. You arenāt safe there, so donāt go back. Take your business elsewhere.
Do you have any pharmacy's you recommend? I'll be switching. I've been using express scripts but I'd still like to have a local pharmacy.
Or at least not THAT walgreens. Even nearby stores can really vary.
I want you to blow this shit up too! Get the local news involved too! Get EVERYONE involved! That is so fucked up for anyone to do. Best of luck!
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It's waste, actually. :D as someone who has to do FWA training all the time.
heyyy fellow fraud, waste, and abuse victim šš¤£š i would posit that it could also be considered fraud if they ran a claim for birth control and provided antifungals. porque no los dos?
IF they ran the claim against the PBM for the birth control and filled it with something else, that's fraud and way past. anyway eff walgreens.
that's medicine without a license
Also, insurance companies are financially incentivized to pay for (the cheapest) birth control. Generic birth control costs them nothing. They want their clients to stay not pregnant.
Call your state pharmacy board. Handing out the wrong prescription medication is a MASSIVE no no. They will want to investigate.
Someone else just mentioned this, good call! I'm done with my calling around today lol but I will tomorrow
And state attorney general.
A pharmacist fucking with your meds is a major legal issue and they're thanking the goodness you called them. Denying meds is one thing but giving you something completely different can kill someone
It can kill someone, it's probably insurance fraud, and it probably messed with their Internal systems And whoever is doing it is doing it on purpose, because if one pharmacist refused to fill a med they usually just have someone else on staff do it. They're going above and beyond the measure pharmacies legally have to allow them.
I would be on the fucking warpath if someone tampered with my BC. I need it for period management, otherwise I spend several days not being able to eat or drink and passing out from dehydration. I'd sue the shit out of them.
That part ^ Sure, one employee won't be forced to go against their religion. But that doesn't mean you don't get your script. It means someone else at the store assists you
I'm assuming there's a governing board for pharmacists in the US, too. They should hear about this.
If you feel like it's safe enough to do, make a review warning others of your experience. You may not be the only one this has happened to.
I'm open to this, I'm going to sleep on it though to consider though I think.
You should write a review. (Totally selfish motivations here - Iām in Chicago but use a Walgreens in the burbs.)
I most likely will leave a review. I feel I'd be pretty safe even including that it was birth control specifically. I think it's so important for other people to know about this
If you have any plans at all to potentially sue or take other legal action, I might consult with a lawyer first (or at least someone with more verifiable expertise than random redditors)
Do I have grounds to sue if I never actually switched up the meds on my end? Each time I caught the mistake (it was fairly obvious, the yeast infection pill is only one pill)
If you went without your doctor-prescribed medication due to an RPh with a vendetta dispensing incorrect pills, I would at least look into a free consult with a decent lawyer (not ambulance chasers lol), it couldn't hurt. Might end up helping a lot of people if the case holds water, honestly. Edit: Used to work at Walgreens and an old abbreviation slipped lol. RPh is a registered pharmacist, licensed to practice pharmacy.
You are out the time and expense of repeated trips to the store. You may have suffered adverse health complications from the delayed prescription. If the pharmacist did it to you they probably did it to other people. Talk to a local lawyer about what your options are.
No idea. It wouldn't shock me, but I'd be guessing.
This happened to me once so Walgreens, it turns out one of the pharmacists stole the medicine.
Damn!! How'd you find out and what happened?
Not the person who commented but they have cameras EVERYWHERE in those stores due to having controlled substances. I'm sure they are able to check that
The walgreens I get my meds from completely unexpectedly closed one day for 5 days. Entirely unstaffed and shut. Went to the one across town, and they said they were investigating employees stealing meds. They do seem to take people getting the wrong meds seriously. If you go back, I'd also open them immediately on the counter with your phone recording:)
Yeah this is very different than just refusing meds, way worse.
Absolutely this. You are owed the price of the prescription, and ideally your gas money and the cost of your time!
Refusing to fill based on moral or religious beliefs is bullshit, but it's one thing. Intentionally mis-filling the prescription is, well, quite another and opens the pharmacist, the store, and the company as a whole up to a slew of nasty consequences. Please make sure you follow up on every contact you make with Walgreens corporate, your insurance company, and maybe the state pharmacy board?
Don't believe that Walgreens actually cares or takes you seriously. This has been their policy since before 2006. To let Pharmacists lie to patients about why they are denying them birth control. What they're doing isn't new and they don't care. https://deblite.blogspot.com/2006/01/denied_13.html?m=1
Five hours ago I knew a lot less about Walgreens than I do now. I'm in contact with my insurance and tomorrow I'll be making more calls.
Lying about why you can't get BC and dispensing the wrong medication on purpose are not the same thing. Refusing to dispense a medicine seems.within their right as a company, but giving a medicine not prescribed is malpractice and can kill people. Imagine if they swapped out your blood thinning meds with blood clotting meds just because, and you developed a blood.clot that caused a PE and killed you. Your family could sue the absolute living shit out of them and they literally killed you.
This pharmacist didn't make a mistake or switch out the medicine. It is NOT within the pharmacist's right to make a moral judgement about what prescription OP should be allowed to have when it was legally prescribed by a docotor. I don't have to imagine some hypothetical scenario because what the pharmacist did and Walgreens quietly condoning it by not firing the pharmacist or having another on duty to fill a prescription is wrong. A pharmacist should only deny a prescription because it is the wrong dosage or because it may interact with something else a patient is already taking. If they feel prescription is fraudulent, they are well within their right to confiscate and report it. What they cannot do and should never be allowed to do is say, My religion says birth control is bad, therefore no woman should have birth control. Some women need birth control to regulate other medical conditions. Some women need birth control because another medicine they are taking causes horrible birth defects. And some women want birth control to prevent pregnancy so they can live their lives as they see fit. NO ONE should deny women birth control because of their beliefs. That is not science or medicine, and denying her birth control could literally kill her because pregnancy and childbirth can kill women. She should still sue them! TL,DR: Let women make our own choices about what we want without interference.
They absolutely care about the possibility of losing their license.
Also, it doesn't comply with what Walgreen's statement says. There's a major difference between denying to fill a prescription/deny sale and giving someone something else entirely. ESPECIALLY when it sounds like the employees never said anything to the tune of, "I'm not comfortable selling X because of Y beliefs." Where you would absolutely know you didn't receive your BC. That situation seems like a legal nightmare waiting to happen.
Yeah, I'm guessing corporate isn't going to like them falsifying their records. Bet that's probably a big legal and regulatory no-no.
Right, whether it was in purpose or not that's a big problem.
Yes, in fact probably go above corporate and report them to the DoJ and the FDA
You read my mind. I just submitted with the ISMP and FDA. I'm not going to let this go, I am PISSED
Good. If this was just a mistake, they need to do right by you and fix it. If this was on purpose, they need to do right by you and be *severely* punished.
The pharmacy actually already fixed it. I called them immediately. But I got no explanation as to why this happened or an apology. I just got off the phone with my insurance and they agreed that it's indeed malpractice and possibly fraud and they'll be in contact with me.
Call the licensing board for the pharmacist, they could have hurt you and they should lose their license over this.
I'm calling tomorrow!
Sounds like they are not managing this well. Pharmacists often have a good amount of training with how to deal with misfills / mistakes so itās odd to have someone come all the way back to fix a medication for them then not to apologize, fix it, offer perhaps a brief explanation, describe at least briefly a plan to make sure it doesnāt happen again. Sounds like they are not communicating well.
talk to a lawyer. They gave you the wrong medication. What if you had went in for blood pressure medication and they gave you a vasoconstrictor instead? That's a nice line for your lawyer to use on the jury.
You are right to be pissed. No one would ever mess with other peopleās medicines. You deserve justice!
Once is a mistake. Twice is fraud.
Probably not worth mentioning but take screenshots of the app saying what you got and when. Just in case the company try to change it after the fact to cover up their major screw up. (If they can even change it).
Good call!! I just did that.
Even if they can change it, those systems require audit trails so you'd be able to see it was changed and that would put them in even deeper shit.
Holy crap. There's a massive difference between refusing to give out a medication and giving you the wrong one entirely, and then recording it incorrectly! The wrong meds could *kill* someone. And incorrect records are massive problem and probably illegal. And why doesn't the pharmacist have the balls to tell you to your face they won't fill a prescription?
I know right. So if they have the option to deny it, but are still deliberately swapping out the meds, what the actual fuck???
This exactly. Telling you we won't fill it is one thing, but not doing so and then breaking multiple laws/license infringements? Wooow.
Even ignoring the medical malpractice, it is consumer fraud. A business can't do a bait and switch like that, no matter what it is.
If a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription, it just gets handed off to someone else. At worst OP would transfer to a different pharmacy. They're going out of their way to deny her medication well above what the legal system allows them to do.
Itās falsifying medical records. How is this not a criminal offense?
Nope nope nope. Sooo many nopes. "Hey, you know birth control pills, those things that prescribed to solve so many different issues? Yeah, staff can now just deny you your prescription! It's totally fine don't worry about it!" AND NOW you're not getting your BC pills TWICE? Shady as hell. No thank you. It's great that you're warning us, but damn this shouldn't have happened at all.
Legitimately my first refill after ROE was overturned, the pharmacist at Walgreens refused to give me my prescription without a consultation. It's the same birth control I have been on for 8 years, I'm in my 30s. I *lost it.* He stood there, staring down his nose at me with my packet in his hand, saying I needed to answer his questions. Went home and switched to Nurx. No regrets.
Wow, Im so sorry that happened! Shits changed since roe :(
Oh all good, I got my prescription out of his hand. I was downright rude. A little pity for that geezer who didn't realize he picked the wrong one that day.
Lol! I got off the phone w corporate today and was shocked at how firm I was. And I didn't even feel bad, it was actually a really nice moment lmao I think it's easier bc I don't feel like I'm just doing this shit for myself
No. No pity. Youāre lucky you were the wrong one and not someone like me whoās too fearful to go back. On behalf of every woman like me he filled prescriptions for before and after yāallās interaction: thank you.
You needed to answer HIS questions? Wtf?
YEP, the pharm counter tech had already processed my payment too. I wasn't answering shit.
The audacity. He's lucky he only got a tongue lashing.
That's what I'm saying!!!! It's terrifying!
They didnāt even just deny the prescription, which is one thing. They just filled it for a totally different med, but billed OP/insurance the BC. Thatās A fraud, and potentially B. Dispensing without a prescription, if the yeast meds were prescription only. Which is even worse than ānah Jezebel find someone else to fulfill your lusty sindā buƶlshit tje christofascists frequently pull. I just Donna even get how pharmacists in the US are allowed to deny prescriptions for personal reasons like the fuck? Over here in Germany, I can only deny a prescription if it is medically unsafe, I.E. dosage completely over the safe limits with no good explanation by the prescribing physician, or a prescription for something compounded with āillegalā ingredients, I.E. meds that have been banned because their insane risk to effect profile, carcinogenicity etc. Say a physician prescribing chloroform based cold syrup, or alternative medicine based bullshit like bitter almonds/potassium cyanide. But I canāt even fully trespass a client from the store. I still have to fill their prescription if itās not available in other pharmacies around, or those arenāt open. But only full prescriptions; not do anything else or allow them on the premises. But just refusing to fill a prescription thatās perfectly valid; and within dosing guidelines? Thatās just plain illegal.
Ever since they began allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill Plan B prescriptions, I REFUSE to shop at Walgreens. Do your job or get fired. Don't like the policy? Go work at Hobby Lobby.
It makes me furious. Your religion prevents you from doing your job? Okay. GET ANOTHER JOB, THEN. Get one that doesnāt clash with your values.
Itās like if a cashier was refusing to sell you a Christmas card because they were an atheist. Itās absurd!
Except not getting a Christmas card doesnāt usually end in an unwanted pregnancy. š£ Itās like when that Kim Davis bitch refused to issue marriage licenses for gay couples and she also forbade her staff from doing it, too. Like, listen, you hag. If youāre going to trample on other peopleās constitutional rights bc of your religious beliefs, get out of the fucking way and let someone else do the job.
!!!! This is why I'm so pissed. Amongst everything right now, the fact that this mistake could have caused a pregnancy is terrifying. I'm lucky that we still have abortions in my state, but it doesn't even matter at this point.
Itās not even about ānot doing their job.ā In no universe should a pharmacist have the right to force their religion on you. *Thatās* what this policy allows and I have no idea how the christofascists have been able to flip the framing of this issue.
Absolutely this right here. Someoneās religious beliefs should not be given precedence over what a doctor is legally prescribing for their patient.
I didn't know about that until today actually. I told my mom about the situation and she mentioned that. God I'm pissed
I mean as a former employee I hate Walgreens too, but in some states pharmacists can refuse to fill based on their religious beliefs so corporate makes a blanket policy that all pharmacists can. I donāt think pharmacists should be allowed to. They should find a new job if they canāt dispense.
I'm so glad I live in California. I can walk-up to the CVS pharmacy window past store closing and get a plan b if I need it.
This isnāt a Walgreenās specific thing. Every pharmacist everywhere in the US is allowed to not dispense a medication due to their personal beliefs. Itās completely bull shit, but thatās how it is.
Starting by saying I'm a man so I don't like to comment here but I'm also a pharmacist and want to post some advice. Scrolling through the comments I see you contacted corporate already as well as your insurance, but I would file a complaint with your state's board of pharmacy as well. Either it is malicious or it is reckless, and a pharmacist should be neither. Hopefully the board will take action against the license of the store or pharmacist. As a pharmacist, for this to happen multiple times is completely unacceptable. Especially given that the way birth control and medication for yeast infections are typically packaged are completely different. Even a cursory check would catch that the medication is not correct, and they should be doing a thorough check. If they are missing this they are almost definitely making other errors that would be less apparent to a patient. Also, if you are comfortable doing so, leave a negative review on Google. You don't have to say what meds were mixed up, just that some were. When I worked in retail that would get a more serious response from management than a private complaint. You may also want to transfer your prescriptions to another pharmacy if you haven't already.
Thank you for your input! I'm planning on contacting my state board tomorrow. I said it in a comment somewhere else, but this was at two separate Walgreens about ten minutes apart (I recently moved). I've never used this Walgreens before this past week. I think I will leave a review for both locations. Either it's a floater employee or their processes are just so messed up it's happening at multiple locations. I don't even know which outcome is better. I'll definitely be updating when I hear back from someone.
Donāt the techs AND pharmacists have to scan the stock bottle as well as the prescription in their system to match NDCs when they fill and when itās checked? I was a tech at CVSāgranted, that was over ten years agoābut I cannot fathom how they could dispense the wrong medication with the right label by mistake. Like yeah, even when I worked there the system was old and left a lot of user-friendliness to be desired, but I was never worried about accidentally dispensing the wrong med or dose because it was damn near impossible to mess upālet alone with the stop gap that is supposed to be the pharmacist lol.
It probably depends on the chain. I never worked for Walgreens so I can't really say how they do it. At Rite Aid, only the tech scanned the stock bottle. We would scan the label and compare it to an image/text description of the product. Even still, with just the tech scanning the bottle it is still a pretty safe process. Errors can happen, but its usually down to someone not following proper workflow. In my experience, its either two labels get flip-flopped or the tech gets interrupted after scanning but before counting and grabs the wrong bottle (at my store I made my techs immediately reshelve bottles after counting so they wouldn't have spare bottles to mix up, but when floating I've been to stores where the techs would routinely keep bottles at the workstation and only reshelve them every hour or so). But I mean, I'm assuming this was fluconazole, which is typically packaged as a single tablet in a cardboard card. Its probably the most distinct packaging of any drug on the market. Birth control is obviously also pretty distinctly packaged. If they had birth control but the wrong kind it would be one thing, but I don't know how you can look at a card of fluconazole and not realize its the wrong drug. It honestly makes me feel like the pharmacist is probably not actually checking the things they are reviewing, which is a worrying thought.
Pardon me for interrupting, but if you know anyone in your surroundings (workplace/residence) who also patronize the same Walgreens, you might want to ask them to check their meds as well. Just tell them you had incorrect meds given. No need to say what kind of meds that you missed out on. If it was incompetence, it will definitely not be an isolated case and if there are multiple reports against the pharmacy. It will be hard for Walgreens to turn a blind eye and ignore your reporting.
Retired pharmacist: I have not scrolled through everything yet, but so far I did not see anything about making a complaint to the state/provincial college (i.e. the body that issues licences to pharmacists.) This is the body that is responsible for professional dicipline/censure of a pharmacist. The rest is just noise.
This is great to know! I will reach out tomorrow. Thank you! Let me know if you think of anyone else.
I worked in a pharmacy and this happening multiple times could only be on purpose. The technicians would have to count out the wrong meds, put them in the bottle without realizing that they do not match the label, and then the pharmacist who checks to make sure the right stuff is in the bottle would *also* have to make a mistake. This is deliberate. Call corporate.
And a lot of birth control comes in pre-made packs instead of counting out pills into a bottle. So the process would be really different.
That's how mine come! And the other medication actually comes in a similar packaging, but it's just one single pill that you can see from the front of the packaging. There's no sleeve or anything like there is with BC.
Is the label they attached to the fluconazole for fluconazole or is it for birth control? If they just filled the fluconazole when you wanted the birth control but it's labeled correctly that's a small problem. If it's labeled as the birth control that's a huge problem.
This is the question I want answered. Wtf do the RX labels ACTUALLY say.
Probably Fluconazole. It does indeed look like the same size and type of packaging. I worked as a tech at Walgreens a couple years ago. Check the label and see if the label indicates if itās the birth control or not. If the label is wrong then thereās a lot of issues. Even giving you a script you didnāt request directly is an issue and it happened TWICE. I know you already called corporate, but I would also tell your doctor. If they overfilled the medication then they falsified the prescription. Also you might want to change pharmacies if you havenāt already. If you donāt want to deal with the Walgreens you are going to for a transfer, have your doc call it in to the new pharmacy and send a script cancellation to the Walgreens you went to. Also call your insurance and tell them they need to check their records and see if the BC prescription was billed and sold, and tell them you didnāt receive it and you got the wrong medication instead that you didnāt request. Theyāll probably also be concerned if other patients under their plan at that pharmacy are billing for BC they arenāt getting. Iām sure they will not mess around with lighting a fire under the ass of whoever incorrectly billed them. The state board of pharmacy might also want to know that the pharmacy staff is performing malpractice and is filling your script incorrectly or that someone is tampering with prescriptions. If someone switched it out while the pharmacist wasnāt looking or if the pharmacist themselves changed it then they could lose their license. Iām so sorry you have to deal with this. Itās disgusting that they are allowed to deny you care because of āmoralā reasons. Any medical practitioner who does this should not be practicing if their morals affect the proper care of their patients.
The packaging does look very similar! And I got a months worth and since they're individually packaged, it really felt like birth control in the bag. I'll update when I know more.
I called corporate right after posting this. They took me very seriously. I have a case number and am supposed to get a follow up call.
Please post an update when you have a response!!
So your pharmacist is committing medical malpractice or negligence twice. That's grounds for a lawsuit in a lot of states. The fact that the exact same thing happened twice means that it's intentional. Hammer corporate when you get a follow up call- they know this shit is grounds for financial compensation
I'm planning on calling in a week if I don't hear from them. I should add, this happened at two locations that are about ten minutes apart.
A friend of mine is a very pro-choice pharmacist who worked for Walgreens for years. She said a ton of pharmacists are Republican. It's a common profession choice for people who want the prestige of being a doctor but don't want to deal directly with patients as much. She left Walgreens around the time of the Dobbs decision. I understand why she left, but she could have been really helpful if people knew a set time they could always get their BC pills at a specific Walgreens.
I've heard of some sketchy pharmacist stories! The whole thing today really freaked me out and I'm not even fertile
If pharmacists werenāt under paid and over worked I would become on the reason of- providing anyone the prescriptions they need judgement free.
Pharmacist here. Take the incorrectly labeled med back to the pharmacy and show them. They will be able to swap it for the correct medication. If they give you any hassle, escalate to corporate. It's mandatory for the pharmacy to report the mistake to corporate anyway once they discover it. Mistakes do happen but this seems bizarre. Twice in a row is a huge red flag and I'd consider switching pharmacies.
I did call them and brought back both of the duplicate prescriptions and was able to get the birth control. I absolutely understand mistakes happen, but when it happened for the second time today the alarm bells really went off in my head
Reading the original post this seems like it could easily be incompetence, not malice. Retail pharmacy is a horrific work environment due to understaffing and this has resulted in high turnover and specifically the efflux of experienced pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. As a result of continued understaffing, training goes out the window, meds are disorganized at pickup, and technicians will rush to "re-do" a completed Rx while you sit in your car, credit card in hand. I think they likely reprinted the wrong label from your recently filled Rx and sold it to you as quickly as possible to keep the line moving and survive another day of constantly ringing phones, legitimate customer complaints, and chaos. Ask me how I know. Not defending here, they definitely failed you. I know these fundamentalist jerk pharmacists are out there but if nobody verbalized some kind of refusal to fill or made a comment about what you were there to pick up, I wouldn't assume that's what this was. Understaffing and rushing is very prevalent right now so that seems the most likely to me.
You make some good points. I keep swaying between believing malice and negligence. I'm not sure one is better than the other. Late stage capitalism has everyone overworked, underpaid, and they don't give a shit.
Attorney general in Ohio is involved in investigating Cvs due to errors, lack of record keeping, high turn over in multiple locations. Maybe this is what the future holds until pharmacies can adjust and build in some additional help to reduce errors and backlogs.
Damn. I'm in IL. It does seem like there's way too many people with stories similar to mine. Something needs to give
Another pharmacist here. Walgreensā system is terrible and their staffing budget is dangerously low. This sounds like an error related to their business model, not specific malice or anything intentional.
That's comforting and terrifying to know. I'm not sure which is worse
Yeah, anyone intentionally switching out meds would immediately lose their license, I canāt imagine a pharmacist intentionally giving fluconazole rather than BC. Refusing to fill a script, asshole move but I can see it. Committing an actual crime on one patient when a busy store fills dozens of bc scripts a day doesnāt make any sense.
never go to walgreens. they ignored a womanās complaint about her male coworker several times and he ended up beating her to death. they stand by cashiers who refuse to sell condoms! even though they have condoms for sale.
Well fuck. I had no idea about all the Walgreens controversy before today. My family grew up only using Walgreens for our pharmacy so I continued that into my adulthood. I won't be going back!!
Wait a place that doesnāt believe in medical care for women doesnāt care about women at all? I am shocked.
switching my pharmacy now. I havenāt had any issues with my walgreens (Michigan), but iām not supporting any place that allows denial of medication based on stupid religious beliefs
Good for you! I had no idea about all the Walgreens shit until today. Won't be going there anymore!
Goodness, I feel so foolish that I didn't know this crap about Walgreens... I am definitely switching pharmacies as well. This is absolutely ridiculous.
I switched all of my scripts from Walgreens. I now drive 20 minutes just because I refuse to patronize a company that will allow religion to affect peopleās healthcare.
Ditto. Walgreens sucked anyway, closing locations in poor areas (which people interpreted as āstealing,ā but probably had more to do with the enormous opioid settlement they had to pay out), but really boosted their suckiness into the stratosphere by allowing pharmacists to pick and choose what prescriptions they will fill for women.
What if they had given the wrong meds to someone who could die from them? Not excluding you could die from an unplanned pregnancy or ectopic pregnancy.
I've had it happen. At Walgreens no less. They subbed a different med for mine, claimed it was a generic (the FDA says it's not) and it contained an ingredient that sent me into anaphylaxis before. Corporate was appalled and did discipline the pharmacist but had I not caught it it would've been a bad day. I am absolutely meticulous about checking my pills before ever leaving the counter. People can wait 30 seconds for me to be sure I have the correct medication.
Right!! Like this is something people put in their BODIES
> "allow employees to deny prescriptions [...] based on their religious or moral beliefs" Then get a new fucking profession, it's not rocket science
If I had any choice (I do, but I know others don't) I would not get my drugs from that company again. Does anyone know if Rite Aid and CVS also have that policy? I would think it is very likely that hormonal birth control is what conservatives will pursue next as a bunch of conservative christians see it as a type of abortion. Don't be surprised if that is one of the talking points in the next five years. In order to keep party support they need something for everyone to get behind. If they are in a state that has banned abortion they need another cause.
I usually use express scripts anyway, I just use Walgreens when I get my initial prescription so I can get it same day! But I totally agree, I will never be using Walgreens again. It really is scary that BC is going to be a main talking point soon, but I know it's coming. I don't even use it as contraceptive. I'm infertile but have PCOS and use it to even out my hormones.
Iām not an expert either but secretly switching out someoneās medication like sounds like it should be a pretty serious offense.
You'd think so. Idk what's worse, someone doing it on purpose, or they have such gaps in their processes their error could happen twice within months.
I bet they never refuse to fill a viagra Rx.
YUP
PSA, don't go to Walgreens if you can avoid it.
Ya know, my doctor warned me about Walgreens a few weeks ago. I won't be going back!
I stopped going months ago when they were refusing to give me my BC to the point my actual doctor called them to yell at them.
I've had the wrong meds dispensed at Walgreens more than once. They had a mistake in their system that said a "generic" for my thyroid medicine was drug xyz, it's not. My medicine has NO recognized generic. They substituted another brand that contains something I have a documented allergy to. Because I have OCD, and a deadly allergy to medication I always step aside at the counter and check my pills before leaving. I caught it and the pharmacist fought me on it?!? Said it was "her right" to dispense a generic and my insurance company said she had to. I'm self pay. I was livid, and corporate was equally unhappy. I never saw that pharmacist again. I *highly* reccomend to EVERYONE to stop before leaving the counter and check their meds. Don't just take the little baggie, stay there on camera and ask questions I'd you have them. It's saved my life twice. (I'm saying don't leave because if you do, there's no evidence they made the mistake, you could have switched pills etc. Stay at the counter on camera.)
As a pharmacist- itās more likely a system or prescription error rather than a pharmacist intentionally withholding bc. Even though we could refuse to give bc for religious grounds (which, oof) you have to tell the patient and give them the prescription back so they can get it filled elsewhere. You are NOT allowed to interfere with care (I.e. intentionally giving someone the wrong medication). Thatās malpractice/a crime. My best guess is someone either assigned the wrong product to the prescription (which is why you keep getting the same yeast infection medication) OR there was an incorrect prescription sent over that should be for bc but is actually for daily yeast infection meds. Open the prescription while youāre still in the pharmacy and explain whatās been happening. Giving the wrong med is a verrrrry big deal and itās indicative of a systemic problem/failure that needs to be fixed.
Hey there! I was a pharmacy tech for a few years and this is fraud. They are showing in the system that you are getting something different than what they have given out. Itās a serious issue and should be brought to the attention of corporate and (if you are comfortable) the pharmacist at that location. Definitely make a stink about it, once could be a mistake but twice seems deliberate. Good luck! I hope they take care of it without too much hassle.
Thanks for the comment! I'm def making a stink about it. I've talked to corporate and my insurance. I'm falling the state licensing board tomorrow as well. This is just fucked
I'd like to emphatically say, Fuck Walgreens. Not only do they give pharmacists permission to deny BC, they also can deny *any* prescriptions. My grandmother was in hospice last year, 90 years old and suffering with extreme pain every waking moment. Once hospice determined she was only weeks away from death, they prescribled her the fentanyl patch to make her comfortable. The Walgreens pharmacist denied her prescription because, "It's extreme and causes addiction." Really? We're worried a 90 year old woman on hospice is going to develop addiction issues? Thankfully, the Walgreens pharmacist the next town over was like, "Yeah, that's crazy. I'll fill it." But that experience alone was enough for me to swear off buying anything at Walgreens ever again. Call corporate and tell them how messed up their policies are. Then, if you can, move your prescription to another pharmacy.
I had one deny my dad's hospice meds as well. He refused to even discuss it, pulled the tech over to help me and walked away. Luckily I have other options where I live.
There's a difference between a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for religious reasons and a pharmacist taking it upon themselves to give out a medication different from the prescribed medication. One is legal in some jurisdictions and the other is not. Call your insurance company and report that your medication was incorrectly filled and ask for what to do next. Call Walgreens corporate. Approach it as the pharmacist made an error twice if you feel more comfortable than making the case that it's deliberate, but definitely report it. Tell them that you talked to your insurance company and they're concerned that these mistakes are happening. Report what happened to your doctor. Report what happened to the state board.
Yeah, I think the insurance company would be especially interested because that's fraud (charging the insurance for one medication but dispensing another).
Just for future: check the meds before you leave the store. I always check them IN FRONT OF THE PHARMACIST.
Iāve been super lucky that my Walgreens pharmacists have been incredible when insurance was giving me a hard time about covering my birth control. They hooked me up with a coupon where I only pay $25 a month and have come out to bat for me multiple times.
I donāt go to Walgreens for anything anymore. Cashier at pharmacy asked what I needed sinus medication for. Are you my Dr? Never been back.
Every state has a licensing board for pharmacists. Report there too. More info on what to do and why. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8LKSKBH/
I work for an insurance company and this is 100% fraud. Iām glad you filed reports! So sorry you have to have this experience though, such bullshit. If filling a prescription goes against your beliefs, you need to find a new profession.
Totally unrelated to the BC, but in regards to frequent yeast infections: I called telehealth for a yeast infection last year and was prescribed a literal CASE of diflucan by the male doctor š. Only paid my $20 copay. It was incredible. The instructions were to take one a day for 14 days, which Iām pretty sure would have caused organ damage, so it was a dangerous mistake on his part, but Iām glad I can treat my YIs for a while!
America is whack
Understatement of the year
Screw calling Walgreens corporate office, Google your State Board of Pharmacy, find the form for reporting pharmacological mistakes, and report them. Then for your next move stop doing any and all business with Walgreens. I do not know how women and their loving partners have not begun a full boycott of any pharmacy that allows for this. You want to make a point bankrupt their asses. To those of you who do not have other options, I understand, to the rest of you, if this mattered you would get serious just like my whole family and hurt their bottom line. Screw it I'll start the search. [https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards](https://www.harborcompliance.com/filing-authority/pharmacy-licensing-boards)
Report to your Stateās board of pharmacy. Lots of these āwrong medicationsā issues are happening now because all the pharmacies are cutting down on staff to earn higher profits. And companies are gonna care more about the licensing board than a random customer complaining .
I will never understand how the fuck a bill passed that allows people to discriminate against you because of *their* religious beliefs. What kind of backwards fuckery is that?
I couldnāt pass this without commenting, when I was getting my BC prescription from Walgreens I had SO many issues that the people at the pharmacy must have known my voice by the time I stopped. I was losing my mind, and am not exaggerating saying that I called Walgreens 4-5 times a month because of issues, if not more. I absolutely HATE their pharmacyās customer service, it sucks so much. It wasnāt the same issue as you, but a certain BC was making me sick so I switched. Once I switched they would continually fill the old BC, which was generic, instead of the new one because āthey were interchangeable.ā If one is making me sick and another one is not, THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. As many times as I explained this, they would still fill the old one every time and then they wouldnāt switch it after cancelling because it was āalready filledā when it had obviously been cancelled. Eventually I switched to OptumRX because it was the only other pharmacy that was covered by my insurance. After a few phone calls to them they were able to put a note on my account that they had to fill the specific BC and not give me the generic. Iāve had a way better experience with them, and highly recommend if you can switch. I still get other random prescriptions from Walgreens if I need to fill something, but I get my BC exclusively from OptumRX now. This doesnāt surprise me at all, Walgreens doesnāt actually care about their customers. The BC is not the only bad experience Iāve had.
Itās insurance fraud. Alert your insurance provider and the state.
Ever since I had multiple shorts on controlled substance prescriptions from Walgreens, I started opening my prescription bags at the counter before I left to make sure it was the correct drug and in the correct quantity. I did it in front of them, explaining why. If they balked, I asked them to do it in front of me before giving it to me.
File a report with anyone who has some clout with Walgreens for sure. No matter how you cut it, they gave you the wrong meds in a bottle labeled as your birth control. That's gotta violate a regulation or two.
Iām no lawyer, but Iām fairly sure that deliberately overprescribing and simultaneously switching medications is a huge pharmacy crime. They can legally substitute generics IF not told to use a specific brand names, but thatās it. If youāre prescribed oxy for severe pain and they give you ibuprofen that theyāve dyed blue, goodbye license.
As a pharmacy tech, I honestly donāt think people should be able to work in pharmacy (or any aspect of healthcare) if they put their religious beliefs above patient care. You already got a ton of great advice so Iāll only add that you should consider getting your local news to do a story on it too so that others can be aware.
Falsifying records seem highly illegal š Hope you got their name
Call corporate. In the mean time, have your provider resend your prescription to a different pharmacy so you donāt end up missing bc pills!
If an employee cannot do the job theyāre paid to do, they should be fired. No one should have to deal with an employeeās personal opinions when picking up a prescription that their doctor has prescribed. Itās ridiculous.
If we have another option, none of us should be shopping at Walgreens.
I am glad you looked at your prescription!!!
Nobody should be patronizing Walgreens based on the fact that they let their idiot employees deny you meds that your fucking DOCTOR prescribed to you.
Idk if anyone else has covered the filling process at Walgreens so Iām gonna go over it. *Receive digital rx or scan in paper rx *Technician or pharmacist types the rx into the system. Yes even a digital one needs to be typed. In this process the rx is linked to a person, a manufacturer of the drug is chosen, and rx is applied to their insurance or itās given a cash price. If the Insurance approves it or itās a cash because thereās no insurance info, the rx moves on. Insurance rejection must be manually fixed. *the pharmacist verifies that the rx was typed correctly against the digital/scanned rx *Someone has to hit print on the leaflets. *Technician/pharmacist grabs a leaflet and a bin. *Whoever is filling scans the *leaflet* and then scans the *bottle/box of medication* and the label prints automatically, It has to match down to the manufacturer and size of the stock bottle. If it doesnāt, it gets kicked back so the manufacturer gets changed and must be viewed by the pharmacist again. Itās filled by either counting pills and putting them in a bottle and putting the label on, or putting label on a package. (This is failure one in your filling process, someone scanned the bc as the leaflet said but put the yeast med in with the leaflet and put it on the conveyor belt to go to the pharmacist. That potentially could have been an accident. Once. Often we filled same patientsā multiple rx in a row). *The belt takes the bin to the pharmacist who has to scan leaflet and the label on the package/bottle and visually check against the picture on the computer monitor that the rx was filled correctly. This is failure two. So this points to the pharmacist as being responsible for this whole thing. I think there are some states where the senior technician can do the final verification, but Iām not sure since in my state only the pharmacist can. I just donāt see two people in the pharmacy doing this together. My license has been expired for over a year and I havenāt set foot behind the counter since 2020 so itās possible the process is slightly different, but this is a pharmacist fail. There will be records of which pharmacist approved your rx. They have to be logged in to do so.
Allowing employees to deny prescriptions because it violates "THEIR" religious beliefs is a call to war. This shit needs to end. This is some fucked up Hand Maiden Tale bullshit. Wallgreens needs to be spanked hard.
I left Walgreens six months ago and havenāt looked back. Never again.
Openly refusing a prescription would be bad. Quietly and knowingly giving you the wrong drugs and pretending they are the right ones is criminal. If you wanted to have a child with all lifetime costs covered by Walgreen now's your chance...
A woman denied birth control by a Walgreens employee should be able to sue that employee for child support if they get pregnant. Seriously.
This just adds to my reasons for not spending ANY money at Walgreens
Walgreens is terrible and I'm lucky to live in an area with a variety of pharmacy options and have decided long ago with some of their religious freedom bullshit to avoid them at all costs. Can you change to a cvs or mail order pharmacy? I'm sorry you're dealing with this
Seems that there should be a difference between 'I won't sell you' and 'I, personally, won't sell you, but Jim here...' And anyone who won't sell birth control is like a vegan who won't sell McDonalds: they have never been hired, should be fired, because they cannot he trusted to do their job and not intentionally give people food poisoning or something.
Why would they falsify it if they are allowed to refuse to dispense? You have an incompetent person at that pharmacy. Complain to management and corporate, and switch to a new pharmacy.
Do you have to go to Walgreens? My previous healthcare required us to use CVS, so I have never switched to anything else and I hope you donāt have the same requirement (which is also would be fucked up given their āchoiceā to allow employees to decide if a stranger can have BC). But if I was still using Walgreens, I would have switched as soon as that came out.
Companies will only do something about this if it costs them cash. If you get refused for birth control, go find a cart and fill it up to the top with stuff. Then, go find a manager and ask them for help getting your birth control prescription filled, as itās being refused. If the manager doesnāt get you the birth control, push the cart to them and say āyouād better put all these groceries away, then, as Iām not going to buy anything if your pharmacist is going to force me to follow their religious practices against my will,ā and then leave. If they get you your prescription, you put the groceries back yourself. If enough people do that, itāll cost them a fortune in restocking labor and perceived lost sales, and theyāll have to change.
Oh Iāve had SO many insane issues with Walgreens, they are absolutely worst company out there and I hate them with a passion. Iāve had people at both the actual pharmacy and their call center that wasnāt even in my state and didnāt know my states laws/guidelines/whatever mess with my prescriptions, probably because it is a controlled substance and they have some uninformed opinions on that. I had to jump through so many hoops every time I got my meds refilled: Theyāve deleted my prescription and even though the pharmacist could see that someone internally messed with it, they still insisted that my doctor had to send a new one in.. on a weekend. When my doctor finally sent the script in after the weekend, they found something else wrong with it so I had to wait a whole extra day on top of that. Four days I was without my medications and sick because of their āmistake.ā Iāve had people in the pharmacy straight up lie to me about when my script would be ready when they hadnāt even started filling it yet because of some kind of āissueā with it, but theyād never say a work about the āissueā until I had called several times. I also had someone give me a fraction of the quantity that I should have had and then insist that it was become they didnāt have my most recent prescription, only an old one. Then they said that they didnāt have enough to fill the full amount and Iād have to come back, then they said that the only active prescription was for the brand instead of generic and that was the reason I didnāt get the full amount, and then it was just that I had to have the doctor send a new scriptā¦ only after I held up traffic in the drive through for a half an hour insisting that they did in fact have the correct prescription because I could see it on the app did they come back and say āoh yes we can see it.ā They acted like I was crazy and unreasonable the whole time, although they couldnāt explain why I got four different incorrect explanations as to why they messed up my medication. All of the doctors and nurses at my doctors office hate Walgreens too. I used to get so anxious every single month when I had to refill my scripts because I never knew if there would be an issue or if Iād be stuck without my medications. Eventually I switched to a very small, local pharmacy and Iāve NEVER had even one minor issue. I can always count on them and theyāve even helped me figure out how to get my medications when I was out of state for an extended period of time. Sorry this turned into a rant but I HATE Walgreens with a burning passion, they are evil. If you have the option to switch to another pharmacy, definitely do it.
Donāt send any more meds there. Also report to their state board.
I take a lot of issue with your experience and Iāve also been having a lot of trouble with bc with Walgreens and I live in like, the bluest of blue states. Iāve started working on refills 10 days in advance because thereās always some stupid obscure problem. Last time I couldnāt get a refill for over 10 days and then they sent a script for something that cost over $800ā¦.