Today, I am reviving my Sarah/Sadukie on User eXperience (SUX) posting. This one is for CVS Specialty Pharmacy and Cosentyx.
At least since May 31 of last year, I have been getting shipments of Cosentyx Sensoready pens. This is my order history:
What does my order history tell you? Maybe that I’m getting 150mg of Cosentyx every 4 weeks?
My prescription list may be insightful too:
But neither are what I’m on. What I take is this:
To be fair, the box shows 150mg/mL. However, it also indicates that it’s a 300mg dose. There is no indication of this 300mg dose in the web UI for the CVS Specialty Pharmacy site.
While the prescription in the order history and my prescription show 150mg, what I actually receive is a box labeled 150mg with 2-pens. That’s because I’m on a dose of 300mg every 4 weeks.
What the CVS Specialty Pharmacy portal doesn’t show is the number of pens per box. If they had included that detail, I would have been able to catch the problem that I’m in now. Or if it had included the “300 mg dose” in its name, that could have helped as well. There are better ways to improve the CVS Specialty website to avoid this kind of problem in the future.
Had the CVS Specialty Pharmacy prescription thing show the number of pens, I would have been able to catch that they were sending me a 1-pen box with instructions that say I should inject 2 pens under the skin every 4 weeks. Or had the site showed 300mg dose for when I was getting the 300mg doses sent like it should, I would have caught that this one wasn’t set for 300mg. However, with their current entries in their pharmacy system, I as the patient have no indication of whether they are filling 150mg with a 1-pen box or a 2-pen box. This is an awful user experience.
So now I have to work with their Specialty Escalations Team and deal with a few things:
- How does a pharmacist who is responsible for signing off on these meds sign off on a 1 per box, 1 box prescription with the directions of “Inject 2 pens under the skin every 4 weeks”? How did they not question that? The math does not work out.
- Every time I refill my meds, I have to specify how much I have on hand. With a 0 quantity on-hand, it would be even more not possible for me to inject 300mg with a 150mg pen.
- How do we get the other 150mg I need to have for my complete dose?
- How do we ensure I get the 300mg I need every 4 weeks?
I am thankful that when I called the on-call service, my doctor called me right back. We’re going to wait a few days to see if they can work things out. Otherwise, we’ll engage one of the fallback plans and hope they can get things course-corrected soon.
CVS Specialty Pharmacy – can you please include either the number of pens or the actual dose in the name of the prescription in the web portal? That would be a huge improvement and a much better user experience for your Cosentyx patients.