At my company, we have a voicemail function that is most often used by prescribers or their agents to leave new prescriptions or refill authorizations. We also have a voicemail function for for patients to leave messages. This idea apparently brings out the stupid in people. Whenever the little icon pops up on my screen that there is a new patient voicemail, I just cringe in anticipation of what I am about to hear.
Usually, it is from some poor clueless old lady who got caught in the phone loop. Goes like this...
*sound of phone buttons being pushed* "What is this...this thing never works..." *touchtone buttons again* "Oh hell...Ed...I can't get this thing to work..." *click*
My favorite is the person who calls and wants to know if their prescription is ready, or has a complicated question they need answered. Really, why are you leaving a message for that? It invariably happens when it's been dead and the phone hasn't rung for 45 minutes, so it's not like they couldn't get through to speak to someone. So they leave me a message to call them back, and when I do, I get their voicemail. WTF, people?!
If I'm lucky, it's someone who is requesting a refill and I can take care of it without playing endless phone tag with the patient. That only happens once a month or so...
At my former pharmacy, there was no option to talk to the pharmacist. In order to talk to a person I could either leave a message on voicemail and hope they'd call back (rarely happened) or spend an hour driving to town. If you work somewhere that allows phone calls to ring through, you and the patients are lucky.
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