Starved for Attention: Medco Pharmacist on Hunger Strike Against Rx Quota System
A former Medco (MHS) staff pharmacist in Tampa, Fl., is on Day 7 of a hunger strike against what he claims is the company's policy of making workers fill up to 50 prescriptions per hour, thus risking potential mistakes. The tactic is a completely new one in the pharmacy world, a staid, conservative place that the media tends not cover. Will it be dramatic enough to turn the media's attention to a massive company that is continually accused of overbilling the government (as it allegedly did according to this 2006 agreement, this federal civil suit and in these state lawsuits)?
Raj Bhat (pictured) lost his job at Medco in 2005, according to his publicist, after 43 staffers signed a letter sent to the state that protested Medco's insistence that pharmacists work at unreasonable speed and yet make no medication errors. The state investigated and shortly after Bhat was fired, the spokesperson said.
Since then, Bhat has unsuccessfully pursued various legal avenues to get either his job or stock options back. With those options now exhausted, he's taking only water. According to his blog:
... internet pharmacists are expected to review, approve and database up to 50 prescriptions per hour. All work is done via computer screen. Working an 8-hour shift, this means a pharmacist might process 400 orders per day. No errors are tolerable, but they are inevitable and happen at a recorded corporate-wide weekly rate ranging from 300 per million to 100 per million (2005) and up from 30 per million (2003).He wants Medco to "defend" this policy publicly, and also to allow its pharmacists "sufficient, adequate time per transaction to use Professional Judgment as needed [and to] Do this without penalizing, criticizing or humiliating your professional pharmacist staff."
We'll find out soon whether this blows up into a 60 Minutes investigation or fizzles into a Weird Drug Stories of Month item: The maximum length of time before a water-only hunger striker dies is somewhere beyond 134 days.
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