I Hate Coupons

My company is almost finished with a coupon promotion for a $30 giftcard for any new or transferred prescription. Thank God.

The Board of Pharmacy should outlaw coupons. They only promote polypharmacy. I don’t think that anyone uses them the way they are supposed to be used.

You see, people, my company prints coupons so that you will transfer all of your prescriptons to my pharmacy and then STAY HERE for your refills. We do not make a $30 profit on your one transferred prescription, but if you get all your remaining 12 refills here, we eventually will. They are not made so that you can transfer your presription from pharmacy to pharmacy, collecting $25 to $30 with every transfer.

I really can’t blame these cusomters for doing that. It’s easy money. They don’t see the harm - we’re corporate giants and can afford it, right?

I am the pharmacy manager. When I reconcile my books the end of the week, I see the money I made, then I have to substract what I paid out in gift cards. Lately, this puts me in the red. It costs my company money to keep my pharmacy open. This does not make me, or my company happy.

I had a lady call me and ask if I would match Walmart’s $4 price on 60 metformin. Sure. She also wanted to use the $30 coupon. I looked in her profile, and she has received $80 in coupons over the past 2 years. All of the prescriptions were transferred in, filled once, and transferred out.

I told her no.

I will probably get in trouble with my corporate office if she complains, but I don’t care. This woman has numerous disease states (based on her drugs, at least). Having the same pharmacist fill her prescriptions every month helps with drug complaince, prevents over-lapping therapies (dual ACE inhibitors and the like), and can improve outcomes.

I don’t care if a customer uses another pharmacy besides mine. I just wish they would use the SAME pharmacy every month and not transfer prescriptions all over the place. How can I perform a prospective DUR on you when I transfer in one prescription and don’t know anything about the rest of your medication profile? How is the pharmacist that fills it at another pharmacy next month supposed to?

I wonder if there’s anything I can do to help my Board of Pharmacy outlaw coupons? Ideally, all of the corporations that own pharmacies would just get together, say “this is pointless,” and stop printing coupons.