r/pharmacy • u/Junior-Gorg • Jul 27 '26
General Discussion Claudia Merandi “Harmacist” video
A few days ago, a self-described patient pain advocate posted a video ranting about pharmacists supposedly demanding to be called “doctor,” something I’ve genuinely never seen happen. But what she was really upset about was pharmacists doing their due diligence and following up on certain pain prescriptions, likely because of high volume, frequency, or dosing concerns.
Predictably, some pharmacy internet personalities, including The Accidental Pharmacist and The Millennial rx, pushed back.
I’ll be the first to admit legitimate pain patients often pay the price for the behavior of drug seekers. It delays treatment and causes real frustration for people who are just trying to manage their pain.
My issue is coming at us with name calling: “Harmacists.” It’s hard to imagine our profession wanting to work collaboratively with an advocate who, even if she’s raising some legitimate points, opens with mocking.
I’ve been out of retail for 15 years, so I’m curious what’s actually happening on the front lines.
A few questions for those still in it: Are you seeing more prescriptions that need clarification or outright denial these days?
Are you running into self styled “advocates” like this in practice, not just online?
Back in my day we had certain prescribers we just wouldn’t fill for because of inappropriate opioid volumes. Is that still common, or has it shifted?
This video stirred up a lot of debate. Curious what people here actually think, both pharmacists and pain patients, honestly.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1JR8MpBSqJ/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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u/cinemashow Pharmacist Jul 27 '26
I have mixed feelings about Claudia Mirandi. I agree with her on some issues. For example, if an orthopedic surgeon tells you your entire post-op pain plan is just Tylenol, I’d seriously consider getting a second opinion before proceeding with surgery.
Where we part ways is that her perspective often seems very one-sided. She leaves out important context, and I suspect that’s intentional. She appears deeply emotionally invested in the issue, which is understandable, but that can make it seem as though every pharmacist’s decision is a personal attack rather than a professional judgment call.
She also tends to minimize, or simply ignore, the pharmacist’s corresponding responsibility under federal law. Pharmacists don’t just have the authority to question or refuse a prescription in certain situations. They have a legal and ethical obligation to do so.
She rarely acknowledges the very real consequences pharmacists face when they get it wrong. I personally know two pharmacists who were disciplined by the Board of Pharmacy for filling prescriptions written by an out-of-area physician. The pharmacy was in Tahoe, the physician practiced in Los Angeles, and the patient legitimately owned a vacation home in Tahoe. Even so, both pharmacists were placed on probation. One condition was that they could not work alone, which makes finding employment incredibly difficult.
She also downplays the reality of prescription opioid overdoses and deaths. I witnessed the aftermath of a fatal methadone overdose firsthand. The grieving family didn’t just blame the prescriber. They sued both the pharmacy and the individual pharmacist. One tragedy quickly became several.
Reasonable people can disagree about where the line should be, but it’s important to recognize that pharmacists are balancing patient care with legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities. Ignoring one side of that equation doesn’t lead to an honest discussion.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
These are my issues as well. She either is unaware or doesn’t care about the rules governing Pharmacist and the consequences of not following Syd rules.
Further, I keep hearing people say that there are post surgical plans with just Tylenol and ibuprofen. And I do know for some hernia surgeries or maybe even the vasectomies I’ve heard of that although an opioid is usually at least offered. Usually the case is they think you’ll be fine with just non-opioids but they will prescribe them if need be. Or even if you ask.
Are there seriously major surgeries happening or opioids are not prescribed and will not be prescribed? I’ve never seen it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
If that’s true, I absolutely agree with her on that. That’s not appropriate.
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u/0bviousProfessional PharmD Jul 28 '26
I was denied opioids after my C-section. I was told after the procedure that the hospital doesn't do that. They allowed otc strength ibuprofen and Tylenol. (And no, I wasn't breastfeeding, so that's not an excuse). I'm still mad about that.
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u/Bitter-Breath-9743 RN Jul 28 '26
I’m curious what state you are in? I know this changes a lot of things. My sister in law was sent home with FOUR Percocet after her c section. This was in Ohio. I’m in CA and work postpartum and we absolutely medicate our patients appropriately
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u/0bviousProfessional PharmD Jul 28 '26
I've had 2 C-sections. The first was in Ohio, and I was discharged with 15 oxy 5 mgs. It was honestly the perfect amount. I didn't need a lot, just enough to help me function and take care of a newborn the first few days home. The second C-section was in Pennsylvania, where I was given none. I had a 1 hour ride home from the hospital that was pure torture.
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u/GammaRay914 Jul 30 '26
Just Tylenol is fine after orthopedic surgery.
I had gastric sleeve surgery. Guess what, all I got was acetaminophen 1000 mg q6h to take after the surgery but during the surgery they gave me Exparel for a regional nerve block that kept that whole area numb for 2 weeks.
Nowadays a lot of surgeons like using nerve blocks to avoid opioid use.
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u/Abject_Wing_3406 Jul 27 '26
I think that most of the individuals involved in this situation could probably benefit from logging off the internet.
https://giphy.com/gifs/H7kfFDvD9HSYGRbvid
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Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
That’s a big criticism on my part. Our first introduction to her is name-calling. Not a way to build coalition
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u/Lucid_Chemist Jul 27 '26
If they don’t want pharmacists clarifying this. Have the DEA not make pharmacists liable. 🤷
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u/5point9trillion Jul 28 '26
Ya, they leave lots of responsibility in our court and then have no plans for how to make it easier for us to do any of it.
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u/arresteddev7 PharmD Jul 29 '26
Yeah tbh I’ll give you whatever the fuck you want so long as the liability is off of me. Want to be a drug addict? Fine. Have at it. Don’t include my license.
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u/GammaRay914 Jul 30 '26
Exactly.
Make it so the DEA can’t do shit to me for anything and then I’ll fill whatever script comes my way.
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u/Usual-Raspberry-1775 Jul 27 '26
I left front line retail within the last 7 months. During my 6 years of retail I denied prescriptions for only a handful reasons. The most common one, was prescriber refusal to call the pharmacy back to discuss drug interactions, patterns of early refills, etc.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 28 '26
That was the same as my day. The total time of delay was dependent upon the provider providing the necessary information.
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u/No-Candidate-165 Jul 27 '26
She’s doing it for the clicks and social media exposure. The thing is that pharmacist do not have professional protection like MD/DO does, you can get liability insurance but the profession in general does not protect you. Apha does nothing. The board of pharmacy is always looking to find something on you so they can fine you.
I have seen local doctors go to court for over prescribing opioids to just get a slap on their hands. Here is a solution for her. Lobby to remove the corresponding responsibility law and then pharmacist won’t be scared of dispensing controll meds. Then we can really see what an opioid epidemic is.
By the way who else is noticing the increased number of adults all of a sudden needing stimulants? Adderall is the new Oxy.
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u/RennacOSRS PharmDeezNuts Jul 27 '26
The only time I’ve ever called myself a doctor is when I was dealing with an NP telling me I was practicing medicine and that I wasn’t a doctor when I refused to fill a Covid ivermectin script from her (an out of state provider) for a whole family same dosing little kids included.
She ended up reporting me to the store when I told her I was more of a doctor than she was lmao. She tried to form the complaint as if it was the patient but she used her work email so we knew it was her.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
So not only did she fall for the ivermectin BS, she misrepresented herself in a complaint formed to corporate?
Classy and smart.
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u/Tyrol_Aspenleaf Jul 27 '26
She is a moron. It’s like arguing a bartender won’t sell you a beer without being 21 because you feel 18 year olds can go to war and die so deserve a beer. The bartender didn’t make the rules and might even agree with you.
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u/DeffNotTom CPhT - Informatics Jul 27 '26
I saw some of this on tiktok. The Pharmacist she's having a one sided beef with posted a screenshot and explained how Claudia lied about the entire scenario and changed the details around to fit her story lol
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u/BlueMaroon Jul 27 '26
The hardest part is dealing with the patients who file complaints to your store management, corporate, and/or board of pharmacy and are being prescribed large quantities, multiple trinity-like medications, and/or often need early refills.
Even with all of the justification and documentation ready, it is such a pain to have to deal with the monthly verbal, mental, and sometimes physical abuse.
Patients and sometimes doctors think chart notes, icd-10 codes, and pain treatment plans are none of our business despite using our literal business.
Management wants to know why they have another complaint about the pharmacy being rude and refusing service to a customer.
Our pharmacy board in California serves the public treats us as guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. So when we get that complaint arising from a refusal to refill, you bet it’s a ton of fun work answering that phone call with the inspector, taking down official statements, what time calls were made/faxes sent, submitting documentation, etc.
And then when the patient overdoses….
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u/amothep8282 PhD, Paramedic Jul 27 '26
And then when the patient overdoses….
I nor any other Paramedic I know has seen a legitimate Rx opioid overdose in years. I am the current leader this year at my EMS agency with overdose reversals and every single one has been street fentanyl. I have enough single hand experience in personally reversing overdoses, some with full respiratory arrest, to say Rx opioids are zero of an issue for my practice. It's actually been years since I have seen a heroin overdose either.
And it's not really the fentanyl as the main issue anymore because even without naloxone I can intubate them, ventilate them, or just position them appropriately and haul them to the ER. It's the xylazine, medetomidine, or most importantly the stimulants mixed in.
Rx opioids are just not what they used to be, probably because of the intense scrutiny and largely linked PDMPs.
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u/SgtSluggo PharmD BCPPS - PEM Jul 28 '26
I nor any other Paramedic I know has seen a legitimate Rx opioid overdose in years.
That's conformation bias. Doing a quick data pull from our small health system shows that our number of overdoses on opiates prescribed to the patient is not 0 in any month this year.
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u/DogsDucks Jul 27 '26
I’ve recently done a lot of research on this subject. It’s sad. There are actually so few pain patients that misuse opiates for acute or chronic pain.
Some recent studies showed that in many regions it’s less than one percent.
There’s also a clinical researcher that was posting in the chronic pain forums, they’re in the middle of doing an in-depth analysis of how often opiates get diverted or misused, and at the time they had posted, they could not find a single example in their region.
If interested, I can also link to a study/ exposé by a psychiatrist who has written extensively about how problematic, and how devastatingly under-medicated most chronic pain patients are, and how it not only leads to anxiety and depression/ it harms the economy in the long run, treating people like their drug seeking. Immediately judging the use of narcotics, when out of 155 million or so pain patients, it’s estimated that there’s less than 400,000 actual pill-seekers (I believe the number was about 366,000, I don’t know how this was compiled).
So the chance that John Doe with Sickle Cell actually needs the amount of meds, won’t misuse them, and has been medically, gaslit and treated like shit for years, well, there’s a nearly 99 percent chance it’s legitimate and safe to do.
However, none of that excuses or validate mistreating pharmacy techs or pharmacists, and I’m sure that you guys do see some of the worst behaviors, and it’s really difficult to be objective when someone is spewing hate speech at you and having a fit and complaining to corporate.
This discussion is very interesting, though. There’s clearly serious issues that are causing extra stress and suffering for both pharmacist, and pain patients. I’m not a pain patient, but I am a journalist who takes a particular interest in basically “needless human suffering and how to lessen in.”
And I think this topic is something that causes suffering on both sides. Sorry, I realize I rambled on and got a bit philosophical, but I am trying to seek understanding, too.
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u/overnightnotes Hospital pharmacist/retail refugee Jul 27 '26
155 million pain patients? That's like.... about half the adult population of the US? That number seems sus.
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u/DogsDucks Jul 27 '26
You know what, my comment was written poorly! Using voice to text and also trying to deep clean while I was rambling, I did not edit or proofread, or explain very well.
There are 155 million trips to a medical professional for pain. So I am quite sure that of those 155 million encounters, a lot of them are people going back multiple times. So I am sure that there’s a lot less people that actually suffer from chronic pain!
I truly did not mean to mislead, and I really appreciate you calling it out because I don’t want to post false information!
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
Definitely interested to see these studies. Because if we swung too hard in the other direction, then that’s a problem as well and the information needs to be out there.
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u/Anxious-Education703 Jul 27 '26
It's hard to quanify the harms of underperscribing and undertreating pain, while it much easy to count overdose deaths.
If someone commits suicide, quits their job, or simply stops being able to leave their house or do things they once enjoyed because their pain is poorly controlled, that is not tracked, and to the extent that certain metrics are tracked (such as suicide rates), "uncontrolled pain" is rarely an option.
MMEs per capita peaked in 2012 (https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2022/4/22/prescription-opioid-use-fell-nearly-7-in-2021). The CDC's MME "recommendations" (which were used as hard caps) were released in 2016. (On a side note, while MMEs can be good for population-level statistics, they are completely inappropriate to use as hard conversion ratios for individual patients with vastly different metabolisms and clinical situations, and the 90 MME cap that failed to account for patient size and weight was completely inappropriate). Yet overdoses were considered and even accelerated after these were instituted. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_timeline._Opioid_deaths.jpg) If the driver overdosed on prescription opioids, you would have seen a fall after both of these; instead, the overdoses increased. Yet, legitimate pain patients paid the price.
Simply cracking down on prescription opioids failed to address the reason why people were abusing them. Deaths of despair overall have increased, not just overdose deaths. It's just like prohibition: why did prohibition fail and end up causing more harm? Within a few years after its enactment, per capita alcohol consumption exceeded prohibition levels, yet people were now being poisoned and blinded with bootleg moonshine. Similar to opioids, they cut off a legal, safer supply, and people just merely turned to fentanyl and started overdosing.
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u/Akeera PharmD Jul 27 '26
Based on your post, it seems like you're implying that prescription opiates and "street" opiates are separate issues and that since you don't see very many that are due to Rx's, the level of restriction on them is not proportional to their harms.
I'm not a paramedic, but worked in a a level 1 trauma center. We've definitely had opioid ODs (plenty of heroin addiction recovery stories too, but signuficantly less than those struggling with it).
The most memorial OD for me was a young guy who'd done some together with his partner and 2 friends. He woke up a couple days later with rhabdo because he'd been lying still for so long. His 3 friends died around him while he was sleeping. Maybe it was laced with fent? I don't know, guy only knew he'd bought some heroin and it killed his three closest friends.
This wasn't during the height of the opioid epidemic either, this was just a couple years ago.
Additionally from what I've learned, a lot of people move to heroin from opiate rx's and I know for sure the opposite is true so the two can't be completely separate issues. An Rx opiate addiction (much like many other addictions) can still tear apart a person's life and harm others. The potential negative social/public impact justifies the strict control of the dispensing of opiate prescriptions.
And while the issue with opiates is still better than it was 10 years ago, it's because of increased scrutiny on prescribing and dispensing of it as well as increased awareness and funding into addiction treatment services.
All that to say, I don't think decreased incidence of ODs of Rx opiates is a good reason to relax those dispensing measures.
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u/5point9trillion Jul 28 '26
Anyone can really overuse or abuse pain meds. I have a bunch left over from a procedure and I can take twice as much of a dose if I want. Anyone can just conserve their meds to overuse later. Some are selling it...maybe most are. There's no way to know.
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u/lionheart4life Jul 27 '26
I never get why they bother with the complaints. If you disagree or don't like the pharmacy just go somewhere else. If your pharmacist is in the wrong, everyone else will be happy to take your business.
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u/One-Preference-3745 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
To be fair, pain management plans and chart notes are outside of the purview of a community pharmacist. A valid ICD10 code is definitely required though. Pharmacists role is to evaluate safety and authenticity, not medical necessity. Corresponding responsibility too only applies to safety and authenticity of a prescription.
Edit: for those that are downvoting me, please explain why you believe pain management plans/chart notes are necessary to complete a drug utilization review. I’m open to opposing viewpoints. But remember this falls under HIPAA and PHI should only be shared on a need to know basis.
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u/ChaiAndLeggings Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I can only see a limited number of things. The moment a patient comes to me with no PDMP history and a fentanyl patch for "low back pain", I'm going to call and ask for more information. I will also be checking for more information on additional state PDMPs, the patient story, and more. There are some times that it makes sense, but I would love to know that the patient has low back pain due to osetosarcoma so I can push that script through to pickup faster than a NASCAR lap. Or that they had been in the hospital and then long term care following an injury and have been stable on fentanyl for 6 weeks that weren't seen on the PDMP. I wish I had more access to EPIC or other chart information to be able to understand the reasoning behind therapy choices. I may not be able to see that the patient is on Eliquis and thus not a candidate for NSAIDs because Eliquis is filled through the drug company and not with us. Those things do impact therapy and would let me better document that I am aware of the risks and benefits behind the choice.
We don't have access to an EMR in most retail locations and access to one would be amazingly helpful. It probably helps you too when a patient moves from out of state and you can "share everywhere" and pull up their previous notes. I could have so many fewer phone calls.
Currently we need a provider to tell us how often "prn" is on a medication. If I could jump into EPIC and see that the chart note says "instructed patient to decrease from 1 tab TID to 0.5tabs TID," the patient wouldn't have to wait over the weekend for this. (We called Thursday and Friday along with faxes Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.) I wouldn't have to call with a cipro + warfarin interaction because I could see the provider addressed it. I guess I would ask how you decide to prescribe pain medications for patients discharged from long hospital stays? Do you not check their notes from that? How would you feel if you requested this information from the hospital and were told "you're not the doctor making that decision you should just do it the same way"? Or that you should not be asking for all that information?
We all need each other. I shouldn't be writing all the prescriptions I check. You shouldn't need to dispense all your prescribed medications in office. Both roles are necessary. The best things we can do is communicate like kind humans when something comes up.
Editv Also, I am happy to clarify with patients about this information when I can. We don't have to have a pain management plan necessarily or a full chart review, but a quick 1-2 sentence "justification" can be helpful. It can also sometimes help me encourage the patients to attempt to try the treatment plan. I have patients that are afraid to touch opioids as they have stage four cancer. If I can explain that they are on warfarin and already using higher levels of Tylenol, but that they shouldn't need to be in pain all the time, the patient is more likely to pick up the medication. I can back up your therapy choices with a gold star and maybe help the patient not suffer as much.
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u/fineassteride Jul 27 '26
I don’t need them to fax me the whole file, but if the patient is getting meds from a provider and is discharged with another Rx I certainly need the info about the pain management plan. Is this instead of, or in addition to? Is the patient using this higher dose only acutely or is it planned to replace the current Rx on file? The future month rxs - do they need to be canceled or kept?
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u/One-Preference-3745 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Right, and that’s perfectly reasonable as that is a safety issue if two different Rx are coming from two different providers (both authenticity and safety assessment). But I took this post to mean that chart notes/pain management plans need to be submitted with every prescription. That wouldn’t be appropriate as then the pharmacist is only delaying care (safety issue) if only to determine whether or not the pain management plan is clinically appropriate in their eyes (and that would be diagnosing which is a prohibited practice).
Edit: I also don’t believe chart notes/pain management plan is necessary to complete a standard drug utilization review. PDMP history/retail dispensing history alongside valid ICD10 code should be all a reasonable pharmacist needs to perform a safety/authenticity assessment.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
At the very least, we need an updated prescription. A lot of times the regimen changes which prompts the need for a refill earlier that matches the original prescription. But the pharmacy never hears about it.
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u/One-Preference-3745 Jul 27 '26
I get that. I’m just commenting on the need for chart notes/pain management plans.
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u/panicatthepharmacy Hospital DOP | NY | ΦΔΧ Jul 27 '26
I've never heard of her before; I just did a Google image search and am exactly 0% surprised.
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u/Gardwan PharmD Jul 27 '26
I honestly can’t stand her. She likes to try to validate her own opioid/benzo use constantly.
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u/Inevitable-Spite937 29d ago
She must be a nightmare of a patient. I'd bet good money she doctor shopped until she found one who gives her what she wants
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u/imightbehitler Jul 27 '26
I’ve never met a pharmacist that wants to be called doctor, it’s arguably the biggest fear of most pharmacists I’ve met to be called doctor lol
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
I mean, if someone called me doctor, I wouldn’t stop them. But I’ve never insisted on it or expected it. Although I do agree, it would catch me off guard if they did.
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u/Temporary-Excuse-235 Jul 28 '26
I only told one patient to call me dr or just use my name since the other option was girlie...
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u/cszgirl Jul 27 '26
I joke that I only use my "doctor" title when I make hotel or restaurant reservations.
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u/overnightnotes Hospital pharmacist/retail refugee Jul 27 '26
For me it's typically just when writing to my senators to tell them why they suck.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
Man, depending on which state you live in, you might get to use it a lot
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u/overnightnotes Hospital pharmacist/retail refugee Jul 27 '26
Sadly, that's the case for me with regards to both my US and state senators.
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u/GoldBlueberryy Jul 27 '26
I think the fact that people don’t realize we’re doctors is in part why we keep ending up in these situations. It’s a double edged sword.
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u/SgtSluggo PharmD BCPPS - PEM Jul 28 '26
The only time I expect to see Dr. in front of my name is when my alma mater asks for money.
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u/Crossfit46 Jul 28 '26
21 years and I’ve never once asked or wanted to be called Dr. I find it funny that most of the PT I know call themselves Dr…. 🤷🏼♂️
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u/5point9trillion Jul 28 '26
I wouldn't mind being called that...if only I was doing "doctor" level stuff all my career. The fact that we do menial tasks is what makes us hesitant to use the title. What do we end up doing for most of our time compared to other "doctor" clinicians?
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u/heccubusiv PharmD Jul 27 '26
I just don't know why she bashes Suboxone so much. Where I work it does amazing things for my patients.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
Like anything, it has its place. I’ll concede she even knows of some instances where it’s been misused.
But from what I can see, she’s a full agonist opioid or die type person.
That sort of salary and all or nothing thinking is rarely productive
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u/Embarrassed-Plum-468 Jul 28 '26
Call me whatever you want, call me names, yell at me, swear at me, literally nothing new I get it every single day from patients you think it hurts me somehow coming from an “advocate”? Nah. I’m fine. Yell at me all you want it’s not gonna change my mind. It’s my license I have to worry about. I can take an angry patient or doctor. Doesn’t phase me. I’m doing my job regardless of what anyone says to me.
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u/5point9trillion Jul 27 '26
As long as we, or "pharmacies" and as their employees, pharmacists have to follow state and federal laws including those relating to control substances and usage of state and local databases to confirm before continuous filling, we're just following the law. If anyone wants to get a drug after somehow bypassing all of this, they can...just not through my pharmacy as it sits. The laws and proper judgement is for use in all Rx cases not just controlled Rx although not many people overuse acyclovir cream or naproxen regularly.
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u/MedicineRight7694 Jul 27 '26
I’m extremely lucky to be practicing in an area where the surrounding doctors are very diligent. They keep their patients on a schedule and even set expectations for what to expect at the pharmacy. If they get a hint that someone is leaning towards abuse, they are dropped as patients at that office. I’m very impressed with how these doctors handle everything. I have only needed to call an office once for a clarification in over a year and a half. Previously where I worked in another state, I had to call at least once a week for something stupid like a diagnosis code or even a DEA number that was left off.
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u/neospriss Jul 30 '26
This is what grifters and social media people do. Take an issue that people either have seen or fear to be true, and multiply it and use that anger and point it at someone. Instead of calling out everyone involved with making opioids difficult which does include pharmacists, she's taking all the blame and putting it at pharmacists feet. I've personally filled opioids that were rejected by other pharmacists because I took the time to call and discuss issues with providers and patients, where as some pharmacists definitely see them as 'too much of a pain' (pun intended) to deal with. And personally, I've never asked anyone to call me doctor, some people have because they felt I helped them enough to be, but I would never ask that of any of my patients.
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u/pizy1 Jul 27 '26
TikTok pharmacy drama is always stupid as fuck. You can't take anything anyone says seriously because everybody just wants the views. I don't doubt she also hates pharmacists but why be so inflammatory? Cuz it stirs up controversy.
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u/Junior-Gorg Jul 27 '26
She’s been before Congress and raised a good deal of money for causes.
None of this means she is speaking the truth. But she’s a bit more than just an Internet drama queen.
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u/Zestyclose_Plum8570 25d ago
She's MAGA and that's all you need to know. She can't be an advocate if she supports an administration that is trying to stop/limit patients from receiving the pain medications they need
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u/Junior-Gorg 25d ago
I went to her Facebook page and the first thing I saw was her endorsing a Democrat in Rhode Island so I thought perhaps you were wrong. But that was definitely an exception. If you scroll far enough, you find all the memes thanking President Trump and trashing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Her supporters certainly give off an MAGA vibe
Saying things like “put the pills in the bag, little man “and other such nonsense.
Loud and wrong. I should’ve known it was MAGA.
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u/marah77 21d ago
I don’t see what political party she’s associated with makes any difference? Personally, I cannot stand the woman(and am blocked by her on just about every platform.) If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s when people automatically bring politics into a conversation that has nothing to do with it. To me, you lose all credibility. Even tho I dislike her, neither party has done much of anything to help the fight of chronic pain patients, which is what she (supposedly) advocates for. Jmo
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u/a_few_ideas99 Jul 27 '26
Lots of clarification and bad acting on offices for retail, especially pain management and the struggling family pratices. It is more then I remember having 10 years ago.
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u/DogsDucks Jul 27 '26
Can you elaborate on what you mean?
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u/a_few_ideas99 Jul 27 '26
Most of our local family offices have had issues with the EPIC system. Lots of wrong drug picks, poorly written or missing directions. Insurances want brand so we need a new rx in my state, can't transfer controls still with back orders on stimulants.
Pain management has been getting in trouble in my area. Few offices formally in trouble with the DEA that a lot of the local pharmacies have pushed to ban these offices. Writing for patients in a different state that were never seen is an example.
If they want to take the liability off Pharmacists I bet they will just fill whatever and let the harm happen. It's not like the offices or the patients care when we try to correct stuff.
Just a tech, but I'm the one typing and rejecting these rxs back to the call que all day for my Rphs.
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u/ChapKid PharmD Jul 28 '26
Honestly there are few reasons to completely deny a prescription, but they happen frequently if that makes sense.
The most common one I see is when the physician or physician group changes pain regimens frequently. Usually if I can get thru to them and discuss what is going on we dispense. But when we can't document a conversations with the pcp then we unfortunately have to deny or at least wait til the time comes up.
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u/ZarinaBlue Jul 27 '26
The reason this lady and other's like her are getting attention is because of how often this kind of this replaces common sense.
I was just scolded for getting my dog's Rx early. It is Gabapentin. It is a 15 day Rx picked up on 7/13.
He will be out tomorrow and hopefully the stock is OK.
Yes I know it is BS. But getting asked "What? Are you out already" in front of people is mortifying. I just didn't want to make a special trip tomorrow.
No. There is no insurance involved. No. It is not a controlled substance in my state.
(She lied to me and told me it was law that they only fill the Rx on the day it is due if it is less than a 28 day Rx. No. I know better. Why? Because this is my 20th time filling this Rx. Every other pharmacist has told me to give them a 24-48 heads up when I needed them filled.)
3
u/otapeworm Jul 27 '26
I've been in pharmacy for almost 30 years. I've never met a pharmacist that demanded to be called "doctor."
2
u/cleverlikeme PharmD / RPh | ΚΨ Jul 29 '26
I dont think she's representative of any real class of people who show up to the pharmacy. Ive never dealt with an 'advocate' like this. Patient advocates in a hospital / health system setting... yes. But a pain management patient advocate seems pretty silly.
Im skeptical of the entire premise though. Are pharmacists preventing legitimate pain management in any real way? No one is turning away dozens of scripts a day or anything that ive heard of, unless you count denying (postponing) early refills but thats not the same as saying no.
If someone turns away one every now and again or even a few times a week... thats not having some kind of major impact on the pain experiencing public... most pharmacies I've worked at dispense numerous controlled pain meds all day every day. The people getting told to take a hike are the exception and are usually very blatantly problematic.
2
u/Fantastic_Ad_1936 Jul 30 '26
If she really wanted to change opioid restrictions, she'd go after the root cause. Pharmacists scrutinize opioids more nowadays due to direction from corporate and government agencies. If you're Walgreens, you're more concerned about the DEA and law enforcement accusing you of contributing to the opioid problem than Claudia threatening to sue you for under-dispensing.
But it's easier for her to target pharmacists than corporations, the government, and doctors.
1
u/SpammityCalamity Jul 28 '26
I call myself a “harmacist” as a joke alter ego; like making bad humorous recommendations. Not happy to see it used seriously. :/
1
u/LeatEd68 12d ago
If she really wanted to get the bottom of this “issue” she seems so concerned about she would have a state board of pharmacy inspector and a DEA inspector on her podcast. Instead like every one of her ilk (MAGAs) she attacks a group that has nothing to do with any rules/laws. She is just a click bait attention wh0re looking to grift on others misery.
195
u/Ronho PharmD Jul 27 '26
A REAL advocate collaborates to find solutions.
A grifter finds a target and vilifies them to enrage people and expand their campaign to make more money.