A Note from Dr. Johnstone
This is Dr. Johnstone – Happy New Year, and THANK YOU for your continued trust in me as your Family Physician - I will ALWAYS honor the Oath I took upon graduating Medical School (and actually Pharmacy School as well), to prioritize YOUR healthcare needs above all else, and never let outside influencers pry and try to distort your care for political or financial reasons.
For the week of January 8th through January 12th, we will be closed for appointments so we can spend the entire week trying to refer well over a hundred of our patients to Pain Clinics, because Meijer, Kroger, and CVS pharmacies have abandoned them and refuse to fill their prescriptions. This is going on all over the nation, but only affects those few physicians like myself who refuse to abandon patients just because they happen to need complicated or high-risk medication regimens. Plus, in my case I've got more than the average amount of experience (37 years) and more than just the 'MD' education: Instead of two years of Internal Medicine, I have three years of Family Practice Residency (St. Francis, 1988), four years of Medical School (Indiana University School of Medicine, cum laude, 1985), and six years of Pharmacy School (University of Cincinnati, summa cum laude, 1981), so that, combined with patients I've often known and cared for for over three decades, makes me more comfortable with regimens that are 'outliers' versus what other physicians would be willing to try. I've had zero legal or safety issues inn 37 years, so I'm happy to have constructive input from legitimate members of the healthcare team, but I don't suffer fools who care only about corporate aggregate data versus real-world patient safety and outcomes.
Hopefully after this week of appeasing these corporate pharmacies, we will start making our 'profile' stand out less so they calm down, and quit abandoning our patients. In the meantime, switch all your business to more ethical pharmacies. It is difficult to force all these patients to go to Pain Clinics, as I know that in many cases, the outcomes from Pain Clinics are not as good, and the safety is sometimes worse, in part because they aren't able to integrate a patient's other health issues with the pain management, but these pharmacies are giving us no choice. At least we can document to the spreadsheet-people that our patiets have been evaluated by Pain Specialists, and perhaps that will make them happy. There really is no alternative until there is litigation or legislation that puts them on notice.
One pharmacist indicated that she found my last phone message 'personally offensive' and 'unprofessional' – I guess if the being-offended shoe fits, then wear it; to the contrary, those pharmacists who ARE doing the right thing as professionals deserve the utmost respect, especially having to operate in a hostile corporate environment pitting them against physicians instead of helping them manage the more complex and difficult medication regimens sometimes required. Please shift ALL your business to the more ethical pharmacies, and THANK the pharmacists who are still willing to do their job. As to the other pharmacists, if they treat you poorly over pain medications, please take notes, names, and dates.
As far as 'unprofessional', look on the internet under 'Chapman Sues CVS Over Pain Medication' if you want to see what is happening nowadays. CVS in Kentucky got sued and lost, for exactly what they're doing here. Like me, the doctors who sued them were not violating any laws, or prescribing anything dangerous, but simply refused to ration medications to arbitrary subtherapeutic doses, or deny combinations that some corporate minion deems 'dangerous'.
If we only prescribed perfectly 'safe' medications, we couldn't even prescribe blood pressure or diabetes medications - both lead to far more deaths than the 'opioids' if taken as directed. For more on that look on the internet for 'Analyzing The Opioid Crisis: 65 Articles By Dr. Josh Bloom', and you will see how those who take pain medications as prescribed are NOT the problem. The pharmacies and bureaucrats are the problem, driving patients to endure unnecessary pain, suffering, anxiety, seizures, and even resort to suicide. Patients with inoperable spine pain or cancer are turning to the street, preferring to risk fentanyl-contaminated fake pills, than deal with hostile pharmacists who humiliate them for needing pain medication; evidently they should just suck it up and take a yoga class.
Anyway, I'm not employed by a hospital that censors me if I speak out, so I'm not going to politely defer to those pharmacists who insist on harming my patients for the sake of massaging their corporate profile, so sorry if they are 'personally offended'. If you are one of those, maybe you should put on your big-boy panties and do your job as a pharmacist and review your pharmacology so you don't call me away from the exam room to come to the phone so you can tell me oxycodone is more sedating than gapabentin, or that 160 milligrams is a 'dose increase' versus 180 milligrams. They used to require two semesters of college calculus to enter pharmacy school, but evidently basic math isn't even required now. Wade into the complex medication regimens like you were trained to, with some knowledge and experience, instead of just reading off your computer screen. In short, quit hurting my patients.
We will be open for appointments next week. Again, sorry for the delay these pharmacies have caused.
To my patients, Thank You for your faith in me, and I will always honor my oath to provide the best possible patient care I know how, hopefully with the help of the pharmacists out there who still care more about patients than corporate spreadsheets.
We will update and expand this website (we let it lapse during the CoVid epidemic and our move to 3711 Southport) as we get the time, once we catch up with these 'pain clinic' referrals .
Sincerely,
Andrew Johnstone, RPh/MD
For the week of January 8th through January 12th, we will be closed for appointments so we can spend the entire week trying to refer well over a hundred of our patients to Pain Clinics, because Meijer, Kroger, and CVS pharmacies have abandoned them and refuse to fill their prescriptions. This is going on all over the nation, but only affects those few physicians like myself who refuse to abandon patients just because they happen to need complicated or high-risk medication regimens. Plus, in my case I've got more than the average amount of experience (37 years) and more than just the 'MD' education: Instead of two years of Internal Medicine, I have three years of Family Practice Residency (St. Francis, 1988), four years of Medical School (Indiana University School of Medicine, cum laude, 1985), and six years of Pharmacy School (University of Cincinnati, summa cum laude, 1981), so that, combined with patients I've often known and cared for for over three decades, makes me more comfortable with regimens that are 'outliers' versus what other physicians would be willing to try. I've had zero legal or safety issues inn 37 years, so I'm happy to have constructive input from legitimate members of the healthcare team, but I don't suffer fools who care only about corporate aggregate data versus real-world patient safety and outcomes.
Hopefully after this week of appeasing these corporate pharmacies, we will start making our 'profile' stand out less so they calm down, and quit abandoning our patients. In the meantime, switch all your business to more ethical pharmacies. It is difficult to force all these patients to go to Pain Clinics, as I know that in many cases, the outcomes from Pain Clinics are not as good, and the safety is sometimes worse, in part because they aren't able to integrate a patient's other health issues with the pain management, but these pharmacies are giving us no choice. At least we can document to the spreadsheet-people that our patiets have been evaluated by Pain Specialists, and perhaps that will make them happy. There really is no alternative until there is litigation or legislation that puts them on notice.
One pharmacist indicated that she found my last phone message 'personally offensive' and 'unprofessional' – I guess if the being-offended shoe fits, then wear it; to the contrary, those pharmacists who ARE doing the right thing as professionals deserve the utmost respect, especially having to operate in a hostile corporate environment pitting them against physicians instead of helping them manage the more complex and difficult medication regimens sometimes required. Please shift ALL your business to the more ethical pharmacies, and THANK the pharmacists who are still willing to do their job. As to the other pharmacists, if they treat you poorly over pain medications, please take notes, names, and dates.
As far as 'unprofessional', look on the internet under 'Chapman Sues CVS Over Pain Medication' if you want to see what is happening nowadays. CVS in Kentucky got sued and lost, for exactly what they're doing here. Like me, the doctors who sued them were not violating any laws, or prescribing anything dangerous, but simply refused to ration medications to arbitrary subtherapeutic doses, or deny combinations that some corporate minion deems 'dangerous'.
If we only prescribed perfectly 'safe' medications, we couldn't even prescribe blood pressure or diabetes medications - both lead to far more deaths than the 'opioids' if taken as directed. For more on that look on the internet for 'Analyzing The Opioid Crisis: 65 Articles By Dr. Josh Bloom', and you will see how those who take pain medications as prescribed are NOT the problem. The pharmacies and bureaucrats are the problem, driving patients to endure unnecessary pain, suffering, anxiety, seizures, and even resort to suicide. Patients with inoperable spine pain or cancer are turning to the street, preferring to risk fentanyl-contaminated fake pills, than deal with hostile pharmacists who humiliate them for needing pain medication; evidently they should just suck it up and take a yoga class.
Anyway, I'm not employed by a hospital that censors me if I speak out, so I'm not going to politely defer to those pharmacists who insist on harming my patients for the sake of massaging their corporate profile, so sorry if they are 'personally offended'. If you are one of those, maybe you should put on your big-boy panties and do your job as a pharmacist and review your pharmacology so you don't call me away from the exam room to come to the phone so you can tell me oxycodone is more sedating than gapabentin, or that 160 milligrams is a 'dose increase' versus 180 milligrams. They used to require two semesters of college calculus to enter pharmacy school, but evidently basic math isn't even required now. Wade into the complex medication regimens like you were trained to, with some knowledge and experience, instead of just reading off your computer screen. In short, quit hurting my patients.
We will be open for appointments next week. Again, sorry for the delay these pharmacies have caused.
To my patients, Thank You for your faith in me, and I will always honor my oath to provide the best possible patient care I know how, hopefully with the help of the pharmacists out there who still care more about patients than corporate spreadsheets.
We will update and expand this website (we let it lapse during the CoVid epidemic and our move to 3711 Southport) as we get the time, once we catch up with these 'pain clinic' referrals .
Sincerely,
Andrew Johnstone, RPh/MD