Walgreens BackOrder on Estradiol

[StephanieC]

Great. I'm due for a refill and Walgreens can't get any Estradiol. They tried a number of different stores. At one, I can get 9 pills, another 5. But I'd have to drive a distance and if I get a partial refill there, I need to go back there to have the rest of the order filled. I don't really have much overlap between refills.

This is the first time I've seen/heard of this. Does this happen often? Or perhaps it's a Labor Day holiday thing...where more women than normal need their Estradiol? Or is it just poor logistics scheduling by transportation?

Spiro is no problem but I was under the impression the Spiro and E should be taken at the same time.

I never expected shortages.

-stephani

[ReneeT]

I used to have the same trouble at Walmart (I HATE that store!!). I now use my pbm's home delivery service. i get 3 months supply delivered to my mailbox with zero copay

[StephanieC]

Thanks for the reply Renee. I didn't know which options I had on where/how to get the prescription filled...I was only considering neighborhood drugstores. What is "pbm"?

-stephani

[ReneeT]

sorry - pharmacy benefits manager. Most health insurance plans use a pbm like cvs/caremark or Medco. Check your plan website and see what there options are. Interestingly, although my plan excludes all transgender-related services, they cover my E, P, finasteride, and spiro. My hrt costs me nothing out of pocket except for my E patches, which i by myself online

[Pamela Kay]

I have ran into the same thing at Walmart. Turned in the prescription for spirolactin which I was about out of and estradiol which I was still good on. The endo had to write new ones because my old ones were out and I guess they were turned in for the 90 day supply. Went back twice with 6 pills each for the spiro before finally getting the full order. They called me today, a week after turning it in to tell me the estradiol would be here Tuesday afternoon.

Don't know if it's a shortage or the big prescription amount but it's taking forever to get mine filled too.

[kathyLB]

same thing here walmart something about the supplier, couldn't get the right dosage, so had to double up on tablets.. something screwy going on here

[Mia-Ts]

same thing here walmart something about the supplier, couldn't get the right dosage, so had to double up on tablets.. something screwy going on here


that sucks! hope it gets straightened out soon

[StephanieC]

Well, it turned out the trouble was with the supplier of the generic. Without knowing how long I'd have to wait, I went with the non-generic. However, that really pained me. I asked how I can prevent the problem from recurring and they suggested I call about 5 days before it runs out. I'm going to discuss this with my doc. Someone mentioned mail-order...perhaps I should go that route.
-stephani

[marci_j]

With my first prescription of Estradiol and Spiro I had my doctor's office call ahead so it would be ready. 2 hours later I picked up a months supply at Wal-Mart. Every time after that I dropped it off and picked it up the next day. No problems or shortages.

[StephanieC]

Thanks for the info about your experience Marci. This was only the second refill (about 6 weeks worth) so I don't know the track record with Walgreens and this vendor. Did you get the generic or the non-generic? It appears the issue was with the generic.
-stephani

[Chloe Renee]

This is a big problem right now, I was on a different forum and people from all over the country were checking in with this problem. Back order is expected until roughly October. Once I get my dosage set I am totally doing the 90 day supply.

[robyn1114]

I now use my pbm's home delivery service. i get 3 months supply delivered to my mailbox with zero copay

I do the same thing, but now it seems they're out of stock on finasteride.

[Myojine]

I get my E and spiro at QFC. 67$ for 3 months. not bad :3

[CharleneT]

I am not aware of an estradiol shortage .... but chances are that I would not know ( I work in an acute, intensive care pharmacy ) BUT one thing for all to know -and it is just the sh#ts.... there are now very commonly national shortages of many drugs. It happens so often that my pharmacy now keeps our list online, so we can update it more than daily. It can be complex and rare drugs, OR the simplest thing in the world. In the last year we have had 3 different, month long shortages of 50 ml vials of Sodium Bicarbonate. Yes, baking soda in water.... even worse, two similar shortages of Sodium Chloride, yuppers - table salt in water.... I hate to say this, but under the current circumstances and distributions system(s), these shortages will not only continue, but they will get worse. At least we are not needing chemo therapies, which suffer the same problems. So, weirdly, you're lucky it is only estradiol.

[StephanieC]

So, weirdly, you're lucky it is only estradiol.

mmmm, yes... but that is pretty important to me at the moment :)

Charlene, does anyone know the reason for those shortages? Is this a distribution problem, supply/demand (eg. money) problem, govt/regulation problem? Just curious. I've always assume the "land of plenty" didn't run into these sorts of things.

I have surgery coming up on Friday...wonder if they'll run out of something during the procedure :0

-stephani

[vivian fair]

Life or death, change or not, doesn't seem to make a difference right now. Try and go two wks with out a death defying medicine that now costs to much for the Goverment provider to pay for! Not being able to pee or not quickly faded into nothing in that case!

[Persephone]

It is clearly a failure of capitalism.

Beth,

I think you will find that it is quite the reverse. From what I understand the Food and Drug Administration (the government) has been on a rampage in which they frequently shut down production lines for even the most trivial of reasons. Part of their gung ho attack on "Big Pharma."

Also, over the past few years the government has ended some of the tax relief for the development of new meds and for the production of infrequently used medications, which was what helped pharmaceutical firms to continue to produce small incident medications that they actually loose money on. The result has been things like snake anti-venom no longer being produced in this country at all.


Apparently, due to the banking crisis, the drug companies had to make a choice, between making big enough profits to keep the big business investors happy, or serving customers

You may have a limited understanding of the way business functions, but "big profits" are impossible if a business is not serving customers. You see, by serving customers they make more money. So I'm pretty sure they are not in the least bit happy with the present situation.

There is one huge corporation that can make more money without serving its customers and that is government. They can find horribly unpopular and inefficient ways to spend your money and simply raise your taxes to cover the new costs. They are the only form of a corporation that can force you to pay for what you don't want.

Hugs,
Persephone.

[CharleneT]

The shortages come for a variety of reasons. With injectable products ( such as the NaCl I mentioned ) the issue is that there are only 2 companies that make it now. Very low profit item. Most drug manufacturers batch process, so they make a lot, then move on to the next drug. One of the things that causes these shortages is the cycle between the batches. If it is too long and the demand rises, then a shortage occurs. The drug companies can't switch over to making a drug on shortage - without causing another shortage because they are late on the drug they moved off the line to make our example. As well as demand variation, there are also recalls pretty often, which can really cause trouble if there are few sources. The recall takes an entire batch out of circulation. There are other causes. The underlying cause is that, the main criteria for those companies is $$. Things like complex cancer drugs have other issues...

Most people having surgery (for example) are never aware of a shortage because a substitute medication is found. This is one of my jobs in fact ( I work the grave yard shift where you have to get creative sometimes to solve a problem). There are occasionally times where it gets really sticky, a few months ago we had shortages of: morphine, fentanyl and hydromorphone at the same time. This left us with few choices for primary pain relief.

Drug companies are some of the biggest lobbyists around. They make obscene profits and use a lot to basically bribe the various parties. Do not expect the government to do anything against their wishes in the near future.

Beth: if you find that the potential for a shortage of a particular estrogen product is enough to shift you to not going on HRT - then I agree, you should not start.

In general, the shortages are for specific formulations. Let's say 2mg Estradiol valerate. So you go in and they tell you it will be a couple of weeks before they expect more of the drug. IF that pharmacy is any good at their job, they will be offering you a different combination that could answer your need. A double script of 1 mg tabs for example. Or 4mg that you divide ( a pill chopper is cheap and quite useful ). Your doc could switch you to Premarin for a month etc... there is a solution.


*** forgot to mention, the banking crisis did not cause this problem, it has been building for many years.