Prescription for Success… Or Failure?
The city in which I live—Chico, California—is a wonderful place. It’s a relatively small city (about 75,000 residents), but it’s home to California State University, Chico, so there’s always a lot of fun stuff going on. Chico is safe and clean, and offers most of the modern amenities considered vital in today’s world: Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, Costco, etc.
Oddly enough, however, Chico only has one 24-hour pharmacy: Walgreens. This is problematic for those of us with small children, who are prone to get sick after the doctor’s offices and regular pharmacies have closed.
A few nights ago, all three of my kids came down with some nasty bug. So we loaded up the minivan and headed off to the local after-hours clinic. The doctor phoned in three prescriptions of antibiotics for the kids. Walgreens was our only option. After we loaded up the kids for the ride home, my wife remembered that we had a little bit of antibiotic left over from the last illness, so we decided to pick up our prescription the next day.
The following day I headed to Walgreens to pick up the prescriptions. I waited 10 minutes in line only to be told that they hadn’t been filled yet. I reminded the woman behind the counter that the prescription had been called in 16 hours earlier (remember, this is a 24-hour pharmacy). She told me that the best they could do was fill them in about 10 minutes.
I waited 10 minutes and then got back in line for another 10-minute wait. When I got to the counter again, I was told that they hadn’t billed my insurance, so I’d have to wait another 10 minutes while they did the insurance billing.
OK, at this point, the Quality Curmudgeon’s blood was boiling. I was mad, mad, mad! Such incompetence! I vowed never again to use this pharmacy (even though I knew I would have to). I realized that my anger really was out of proportion to the situation. So, being the nice guy that I am, I didn’t say anything. I just waited along with everyone else.
After another 10-minute wait, I was called back to the window and told that Blue Cross didn’t seem to have my daughter in its system. OK, I was about to lose it at this point, but something curious happened. My anger at Walgreens and Blue Cross turned into sympathy and compassion for Andrea, the young woman who was helping me. Rather than just say, “Sorry, I can’t help you,” she called Blue Cross and spent 15 minutes on the phone arguing on my behalf. When a supervisor at Blue Cross finally told her that my daughter didn’t exist and there was nothing Blue Cross could do, Andrea just hung up and called Blue Cross back. She spoke to a different person who was able to find my daughter in the system and (hopefully) fixed the problem for good.
I thanked Andrea for her help. “This happens all the time,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s no big deal.”
Andrea then told me that she had to have a pharmacist check the prescription before she could sell it to me, so I had to wait another five minutes. When I was called back to the counter to pay, Walgreens’ computer system wouldn’t let them sell me one of the prescriptions. At this point, I wasn’t really so much angry as I was amused. Five employees tried in vain to override the computer system. Finally, one of the pharmacists told the cashier to just manually enter the info and sell me my prescription.
I was in the pharmacy for over an hour. In that time, I went from annoyed, to angry, to exasperated, to sympathetic, to amused.
So, what lessons did I take away from all of this? Who’s fault was it? Greedy lawyers for driving up the cost of health insurance with frivolous lawsuits? Incompetent management at Walgreens for not devising a better process? Computer software manufacturers for not designing better software? Blue Cross for a lack of training and inefficient processes? How can I improve this situation for the future? Let’s examine my options. I could:
• Move to a bigger city.
• Encase the children in plastic bubbles.
• Try to get to the doctor earlier in the day so I can use a different pharmacy. (Though given the state of health care these days, there’s no guarantee that I would have had a different experience with a different pharmacy.)
• Switch insurance companies. Again, there’s no guarantee that would be a better solution.
• Accept that there are some things that I just don’t have any control over, do the best that I can and not be so intolerant of those caught up in the process.
I think that the last solution is probably best. I know that Andrea and the other people at Walgreens were doing the best they could with the system they had available. The same is probably true of the reps at Blue Cross. Many of our readers face similar scenarios every day. You’ve got to follow somebody else’s processes and make the best of it. That’s what this quality stuff is all about—making the best of somebody else’s process and adapting your organization’s capabilities to meet the customers’ (external and internal) needs.
I’d like to know what processes drive you crazy. Share your experiences at www.qualitycurmudgeon.com
Scott M. Paton is Quality Digest’s editor at large
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