I get my medications - there are a lot of them - by mail-order pharmacy. At the beginning of the year, my insurance company switched from using Express Scripts for that service to using Medco Health. All of my prescriptions transferred properly, except one: fexofenadine, the generic for Allegra. Due to complete incompetence on the part of Express Scripts, I am now down to a week remaining of that medication and I have to jump through very twisted hoops to get it. Here’s the e-mail I just sent to my physician:

I had left a message asking to have a prior authorization called in for fexofenadine (generic Allegra). It looks like it’s going to be a bit more complicated than that.

My insurance company switched from using Express Scripts for mail-order pharmacy to using Medco for that. When the information was transferred, everything was fine on my account except for the fexofenadine. Although the prescription number, quantity, and date of last refill transferred, the name of the medication did not and neither did the prior authorization. Because of this, they cannot refill the prescription and they need a new one. They also still need the prior authorization.

To send in the new prescription, they have a fax-on-demand system. The steps I was given are:

1. Call 888-XXX-XXXX and press 1 for a doctor’s office, then 1 for fax instructions.
2. Give my information, including DOB (1/18/81) and insurance number (XXXXXX) - the rest should be in your system.
3. After receiving the form, have it faxed back so they receive the new prescription.

To obtain the prior authorization, the number to call is 800-XXX-XXXX and they will also need my insurance number, DOB, etc.

Hopefully that should be all that is necessary to get things working again with the fexofenadine. If possible, I would also like to get a separate one-month prescription that I can bring to CVS to have filled immediately. I initially contacted Medco about this problem early in January, and I was told to wait and see if it was resolved. Express Scripts didn’t complete the transfer of information until January 13th and they still didn’t get all of it (including mine) over properly. So I am now down to about a week of fexofenadine because they took two weeks to still not do their job. Obviously I am planning to contact Express Scripts about this! But meanwhile I do need the medication.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this. I’m sorry to put you through the hassle when it is purely the fault of the old mail-order pharmacy.

Incompetence. Complete, total, and possibly deliberate incompetence.

Added: I called Express Scripts to politely ask to have the prescription re-transmitted to Medco. The person I spoke with was very helpful, and she put in a referral request with the pharmacy. Unfortunately it just can’t be that simple - the pharmacist is going to have to call me back to make sure all of the information is correct. And of course they’ll only try my work number after I’ve left, even though I also gave home and cell numbers, so then I will have to wait until tomorrow morning to get the message, then call them back, then wait for a callback…this is nothing short of absurd. And now, all of a sudden, there’s a possibility that the prescription might be expired, which is ridiculous, because she wrote that at the same time as my other prescriptions, and they are all fine.