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HeyBub[_3_]

wrote:

As for the time to fill a prescription, I fully agree. How frikkin
long can it take to count out 50 pills (in the automatic pill
counters they use these days), put them into a pill bottle and apply
a label? If there was a hundred people waiting for prescriptions, I
could understand the delays, but most of the time I go to the store,
there are at most 5 people waiting, and I have to sit there for an
hour or more for a bottle of 25 antibiotics. Worse yet, when it's a
tube of ointment that comes prepackaged, adn all they got to do is
type my name on their computer and stick on the label that was
printed.

Then there's the story about the chap cleaning out the lower east-side
apartment of his recently deceased grandfather. During the job he ran across
a shoe repair stub from 1934! The little shoe repair business still existed
around the corner, so the grandson thought he might have some fun.

He took the ticket to the shop and handed it to the cobbler sitting at a
workbench. The cobbler glanced at the ticket, handed it back, and said, as
he returned to his work, "They'll be ready Wednesday."

From the pharmacy's perspective, there's no sense putting the pills in a
bottle, preparing a label, and so forth, until they have more assurance
than an anonymous 'phone call that the "patient" is serious about actually
WANTING the drug. The probability of actually making the sale goes up
significantly when the patient appears at the counter ready to pick up the
prescription. Still not 100%, but higher.

This is especially true for compounded medicines - those that have to be
custom-mixed for a specific prescription and also for high-priced pills,
i.e., Viagra.