WHI Downtime – Walgreens again screws over everyone.

Turns out that Walgreens Health Initative ( http://www.walgreenshealth.com not Walgreens the Retail Outlet. Same Bat-Time, different Bat-Channel) decided to do a “system upgrade” on a Monday that resulted in downtime all of Monday and Tuesday.
Gee. You would think that with their bazillions of dollars they are making (since they pay us retail folk jack-and-shit) they wouldn’t be down for a whole 2 days. Furthermore, you would expect that they would do a “systems upgrade” at like 2am on saturday morning when all sane pharmacies are closed.
But no, I had to deal with a huge stack of claims that needed to be billed today because WHI screwed the pooch and decided to take themselves out of pharmacy gene pool for a whole 2 days.
Sorry this isn’t very angry’ish. However I will leave you with a bit of fun information. Take your usual Gin and Tonic. Now instead of drinking it right away, put a slice of cucumber in it. Now sip and taste the wonderfulness. Some chap from Australia dropped me that note, its magical.

Comments #

Comment by canadotornado on 2007-09-27 07:36:47 -0700 #

Most systems upgrades require at least a 24 hour shutdown for upgrade and immediate debugging purposes. However you are right most sane people will do it in the early morning hours when most places are shut down. But this makes too much sense and as I’m sure you know by now anything that makes sense normally does not happen.

Comment by Mike on 2007-09-27 07:59:35 -0700 #

It’s an upgrape!

Comment by Kay on 2007-09-27 08:21:36 -0700 #

ESI has been doing the same thing this week in MO. What do you do in this situation? We used to charge the last copay paid and then resubmitted after they were back up. Now we charge the patient cash price (slightly elevated over what ESI paid) and make them come back to get their copay refund. We are starting to use the theory that nothing is going to change with these processors unless the patient feels the pain. I’m tired of covering collective asses and possibly taking a hit for it. What do you think?

Comment by Sara on 2007-09-27 09:55:31 -0700 #

Gad,, I was wondering why we kept getting retry’s, rejects, downtimes, downclowns.. I thought the world was ending for a second there.

Comment by drh on 2007-09-27 11:39:13 -0700 #

Did you start sneaking Prozac from your pharmacy??

Comment by Elena on 2007-09-27 13:51:28 -0700 #

Damn, you were only down for 2 days? We were down for almost 3 days, and it was hit or miss since last Wednesday. Tricare, too. You can’t even get anyone to answer the phone over there lately! And how we handle it is that if the pt wants to get it right that min, she pays cash and she can bring the receipt back for a refund w/in 7 days. If they want to wait, then we just leave it on retry till it goes thru. Though it is really depressing to see almost 2 whole pages of retry.

Comment by nikki on 2007-09-27 21:18:47 -0700 #

Thank god. I thought I was the only person going through that hell last week. Plus with Tricare going up and down for a week, it makes me want to punch someone

Comment by Katie on 2007-09-27 21:43:37 -0700 #

I’m more intrigued by this drink… it sounds interesting.

Comment by Brandon on 2007-09-27 22:17:08 -0700 #

Yeah, I had about 3 claims that we were trying to submit on tuesday I believe…
Man, we had to guess the price of their meds…and put that as the copay…and eat the loss if they happen to be in the donut hole.

Comment by rph3664 on 2007-09-28 14:59:31 -0700 #

reason #36,457 why I am glad I left retail.

Comment by Liz on 2007-09-29 08:01:31 -0700 #

Yeah it was a pain in the ass!! And us saps who actually WORK for walgreens have to call them everytime they go down to see what peoples co-pays are.. oh when they go down they take us all down with them. I had to have a prescription filled for myself that day and us employees don’t even have whi and ours were timing out too! They aren’t very helpful there either they were like oh well we can’t do anything because the whole system is down. Oh thanks so now I have NO idea what to charge these people so if we lose money guess what so do you assholes!!!

Comment by Claire on 2007-10-07 19:02:38 -0700 #

yes! this whole computer issue happened to me too–tricare and all insurances!! grr!! I wanted to cry. I am a new pharmacist right out of school and working at walgreens, and I didn’t know what the hell to do last week. then–to top it all off, our entire hard drive (yes, hard drive!!) crashed on Friday. we lost our entire work queue and it still isn’t back up…I’m about to pull my hair out.

Comment by Danielle Thacker on 2007-10-08 10:55:26 -0700 #

(i’m having trouble subscribing to your site)
I LOVE YOU! Would love to meet you for lunch someday if you’re in the Tampa Bay area. I have been a tech for 7 years, currently working for a small managed care company (previous Wellcare employee). I am ready to start pursuing a pharmacy degree. Any advice?