Pharmacists played God and my wife died | Makin Tea: The Bill of Writes

Wednesday, September 29, 2021, 9:07 a.m.

Ken: So you’re calling from a pharmacy? Okay.

NPV: Yes. We’re the customer service part of the pharmacy, but yeah.

Ken: Okay. And what is the name of the pharmacy?

NPV: New Pharmacy Ventures.

Ken: New Pharmacy Ventures. Okay. What specifically can I help you with?

NPV: I just wanted to go over this prescription that we have here for her and process the prescription payment for her so she can get the medication she needs.

Ken: And what was the date that the prescription was ordered?

NPV: Let me check here for you. It says the 5^th of this month.

Ken: Yeah, September 5th. And the medication?

NPV: Can I just get a verification of her birthday and address before I give that information out?

Ken: 11-19-1962

NPV: Okay.

Ken: 9815 Hazelwood Avenue, Strongsville, Ohio 44149.

NPV: All right. I have a hydroxychloroquine, 200 milligram, 10 count. I have Zofran, four milligram, 30 count. Doxycycline, 100 milligram, 20 count. A Medrol Dosepak, four milligram, one count and a Pulmicort Flexhaler, a 90 milligram one count.

Ken: Can I inquire, because if this was requested on September 5^th, this is one, two, three – this is like a month. This is like four weeks. How come it’s taken so long to get this medication?

NPV: Because unfortunately, since we are one of the only people who are willing to like, push these prescriptions through for the people, we are getting like an overwhelming amount of calls for the scripts at the same time. We get about 500 new ones a day. And I’m not quite sure how the system operates as far as when we get them and how we get them, but we just get them at random times and try to process them as soon as possible.

Ken: Are you located here in Ohio?

NPV: Arizona.

Ken: Oh. Okay. Now I can appreciate the backlog and the volume. Unfortunately, when it takes a month to fill a prescription and a patient is very ill with, Covid, that patient sometimes dies waiting for their prescription. And that was the case for Amy.

NPV: Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry.

Ken: I texted the doctor who wrote the prescription without any response. So my wife passed away a couple of weeks ago, and she did not receive her medication. When someone is sick and it takes a month to fill a prescription it’s too late.

Saturday, September 4, 2021: Let’s try again

It was 9:39 p.m. on a rainy Saturday evening as we approached the Canton area on I-77. We were driving home from Myrtle Beach, where our eagerly anticipated annual family vacation turned depressingly sour.

Amy and our son, Ryan, got the worse of what we assume was Covid. Ryan was sick almost from the first Saturday afternoon when we settled into our beachfront condo, and spent most of the following week in bed. Amy’s symptoms – coughing, fatigue, chills, achiness, loss of taste and difficulty breathing – came on about a day after Ryan’s did and followed an intense episode of indigestion that prompted a sunrise Tums run to Wal-Mart on Sunday morning.

Ryan’s girlfriend, Rebecca, also was sick for a few days. I got off easy. I felt crappy for about a day and a half, took a nap and woke up in an afternoon sweat feeling fine.

Kyle, our older son, and his girlfriend, Monique, escaped the illness altogether. They believe they had Covid during the summer of 2020 and were protected by their antibodies.

As the week wore on, seeing that the vacation wasn’t going as planned, I started to scheme in my mind how we might schedule a do-over sometime during the fall. But it was Amy who said it out loud. She said we would deserve it.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021: Front Line Doctors

On Wednesday evening, with Amy and Ryan not showing much improvement, I went online to the website of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS). AFLDS is a group of board certified, well established physicians who have been relentlessly attacked because of their dissenting opinions about the global medical establishment’s response to the pandemic. Their medical opinions have caused them to be fired from their jobs, banned from social media and ridiculed by the “experts” in the mainstream media.

For example, America’s Frontline Doctors had issued a white paper that offered factual information about the Covid “vaccinations” that the government, media, the medical establishment and, of course, Big Pharma, didn’t want the public to know about. The research document doesn’t take a position on whether a person should take the shot, but opined that a person is entitled to know all the facts before making that decision.

Among the most threatening information the Frontline Doctors discuss is the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and ivermectin as possible preventatives and/or treatments for Covid.

As detailed by AFLDS and a substantial volume of other literature – including the October 15 report by Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson – those two medications, prior to the pandemic, were widely hailed by such authorities as the World Health Organization (WHO) as safe and effective medications – if not wonder drugs for a variety of illnesses. In most countries around the globe, at least in the case of hydroxychloroquine, they were available over the counter without the need for a doctor’s prescription.

That’s how safe they are – and since I began writing this article, an increasing number of doctors and medical professionals have gone public, vouching for the safety and the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for treating Covid. On Monday, January 24, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) hosted Covid-19: A Second Opinion, a five-hour discussion that featured more than 15 doctors and other medical professionals who discussed the Covid pandemic and how it was “mismanaged” by the medical bureaucracy. Forbidding the use of safe, early treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, made up a substantial portion of the discussion. One of those doctors, Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of the mRNA technology used for Covid “vaccines,” has opined that a half million excess Covid deaths have happened in the United States through the intentional suppression of early treatment by the U.S. government.

Unfortunately two significant events happened with respect to hydroxychloroquine during the early months of the pandemic.

First, President Trump, on March 19, 2020 accurately suggested hydroxychloroquine as one medication that had shown promise as a potential treatment. Of course, the mainstream media and other stooges for the global elite were ready to discredit anything that Trump said.

But more important than the Orangeman Bad Syndrome were the rules for getting FDA approval to bring “vaccinations” to the market under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). An EUA, the rules say, cannot be issued if an effective treatment for the condition the experimental intervention is meant to prevent or treat already exists. Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and other potential Covid treatments posed a major threat to the agendas of the vaccine industry and cowardly psychopaths like Tony Fauci and Bill Gates. Those who positively discussed the possible benefits of those medications – including long-established and trusted medical doctors – had to be attacked as dangerous conspiracy theorists.

During the early months of the pandemic, governments headed by authoritarian psychopaths like Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and health related licensing boards around the country successfully prevented pharmacies from filling prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and threatened doctors with the loss of their licenses for writing those prescriptions. Other corporate pharmacies took it upon themselves to restrict or suppress the medications regardless of their potential to save lives.

In October, I asked a local family practice physician what the current rules were for writing and filling prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine.

“Depending on the pharmacists now, believe it or not,” she texted. “Last time I tried to prescribe hydroxychloroquine the pharmacist wouldn’t fill unless I verified that the person had an autoimmune disease.”

But the American Frontline Doctors, believing that free people, at the very least have the right to try a medication like hydroxychloroquine, whether or not the establishment experts deem it safe and/or effective, offered a way to get it.

Sort of.

On that Wednesday evening in Myrtle Beach, I went to the AFLDS website and scheduled telephone consultations with doctors for Amy and Ryan. The cost was $90 per consultation, payable in advance. The objective was for the doctor to assess the patient’s symptoms and, if appropriate, to prescribe treatment that most likely would include the suppressed hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

The website was clear: “The physician will call you typically within 2-7 days (not counting weekends),” it instructed. “Please keep your phone with you. After your telemed appointment, the pharmacy will contact you for your payment information and mailing address to send the prescription to you. (Italics added for emphasis). If you have questions for the pharmacy, please use the pharmacy contact information which was provided to you in an email or text confirming that your prescription was sent to the pharmacy and they will be able to help you.”

Saturday, September 4, 2021: “You are heroes”

Three days after the telehealth consults were requested, Amy was miserable as we packed the car and embarked on our 12-hour drive home. But she felt at least well enough to drive for a couple hours. Ryan was feeling somewhat better and was able to drive five or six hours. As we approached a construction zone and drizzling rain south of the Canton area at 9:39 p.m., Amy received a phone call from Dr. Nevine Mahmoud.

Dr. Mahmoud was clearly concerned about Amy’s condition.

She explained that she was going to write a variety of prescriptions. All but one, she said, could be filled at our local pharmacy. The hydroxychloroquine would have to be ordered from an out of state pharmacy because pharmacies in Ohio would not fill orders for hydroxychloroquine, she said.

Locally, in the Strongsville area, we weren’t aware of any pharmacies that would still be open late on a Saturday night. But hearing Amy’s coughing and hoarse voice over the phone, Dr. Mahmoud suggested that instead of waiting for our local Rite-Aid to open the next morning, maybe there was a 24-hour pharmacy somewhere in Canton or Akron. It sounded like a crapshoot to go into unfamiliar areas on a dark, rainy night. We were just an hour from home. So we decided to push onward.

Amy profusely thanked Dr. Mahmoud for the work she and the Frontline Doctors were doing to make the suppressed treatments available, and to educate people with facts and research that our government, the medical establishment and the mainstream and social media has obviously conspired to hide from the consideration of the American people.

“You are heroes,” Amy told Dr. Mahmoud.

Dr. Mahmoud mentioned again that maybe we could find a 24-hour pharmacy on our way home. She gave Amy her mobile phone number and told her to call if she needed anything further.

After the 18-minute call concluded, there was still some confusion about whether Dr. Mahmoud was going to call the prescription in to our local Rite-Aid, or wait to see whether we could find an open pharmacy. Amy dialed the number the doctor provided to find out. A recorded message said she had reached a non-working number. I discovered later that Amy had written the number incorrectly.

We arrived home about an hour later. Ryan and Rebecca proceeded to their home, where Ryan received his telemed consultation with Dr. Mahmoud at 12:19 a.m. Ryan’s instructions were the same as Amy’s – all but one of his prescriptions could be filled at a local pharmacy. Hydroxychloroquine would need to be ordered from a pharmacy outside Ohio.

The next morning, I was unclear whether Dr. Mahmoud had called Amy’s prescription into the local Rite-Aid, and the pharmacy didn’t open until 10:00 a.m. I attempted to call Dr. Mahmoud for a clarification. Because I didn’t have her correct number, I had to track the doctor down through an Internet search.

Ken: This is Dr. Mahmoud?

NM: Yes. Speaking.

Ken: I think, if I have the right doctor, you were speaking to my wife last night about a prescription up here in Strongsville, Ohio for Covid.

NM: Uh, yes.

Ken: Oh, okay, good. I got the right one. She was trying to reach you again last night, but I think she wrote down your number incorrectly – it said that it was a non-working number, so we just wanted to follow up to see whether that prescription has been submitted to the pharmacy or not, and what she needs to do.

NM: I’m sorry – which prescription? The one in the system… are you the one who are driving from Carolina?

Ken: Yes.

NM: Yeah. So she gave me the number for Rite-Aid I think. I think I called them. Did she, did you receive a prescription or no?

Ken: She didn’t receive it yet. And I tried to call the pharmacy. They’re not open yet. So I just wanted to follow up because like I say, she wrote the number down wrong, and then it said that it was a bad number. So I just wanted to see if I could track you down. But if you called it in, then I’ll wait until they open and I will check with them.

NM: Yeah. I think I called.

Ken: Okay. And then what does she need to do with, because you said that there would be a prescription for hydroxychloroquine coming from a different pharmacy. Does she need to do anything on that or is that in the works too?

NM: No, they will – you follow up with them. They will process your prescription.

Ken: Okay. So how does she know how to reach them?

NM: They will communicate with you.

Ken: Oh. So they will call, so that’s…

NM: Yes.

Ken: You’ve already got that ordered. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thursday, September 9, 2021. “Sorry and very sad”

The first time I heard from New Pharmacy Ventures was 24 days later.

By Tuesday afternoon, we had received no phone calls, text messages or emails from New Pharmacy Ventures. In fact, we didn’t even know the name of the pharmacy that was supposed to contact us. I checked with Ryan. He also had not been contacted by the out-of-state pharmacy about his hydroxychloroquine prescription.

At 3:42 p.m. on Tuesday, September 7, two days after I previously spoke with Dr. Mahmoud, I sent her a text message using Amy’s phone:

“Good afternoon. I am curious about when my hydroxychloroquine is expected to arrive.
Thank you,
Amy McEntee”

Two days later, on Thursday, September 9, at 9:22 a.m. – about five hours after Amy passed on – Dr. Mahmoud replied.

“Hi
Did you ever call the pharmacy
Which state are you in”

I replied, “No thank you. The pharmacy never contacted us with a phone number. Amy passed away last night.”

Dr. Mahmoud replied, “I am so sorry and very sad. What is your relationship to her”

“She is my wife.”

“You have my sincere condolences.”

Five days later, on September 14, I followed up with another text message.

“To this very day, neither my son, nor my now dead wife, have been contacted by your pharmacy about hydroxychloroquine. Their consult with you was 10 days ago. The medication might have saved her life. I listened in the car as my wife heaped praise on your organization while she spoke with you. Shame on you all.”

The AFLDS website cautioned that high demand was causing delays in filling prescriptions.

“Due to the extraordinarily high demand for AFLDS telemedicine services and medications, the pharmacy has been unable to meet demand as quickly as it would like,” the site said. “They are addressing this issue and it will be improved, however in the meantime please note the following: First – patients with symptoms will be prioritized. If you do not have symptoms, please do not say you do – you have time to receive your meds and you will still receive them relatively quickly.”

Patients with symptoms will be prioritized.

Symptoms like those that concerned Dr. Mahmoud during her phone consult with Amy, perhaps.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021. Horse dewormer

After speaking with Dr. Mahmoud on Sunday, September 5, I went to Rite-Aid to pick up the prescriptions that the store was willing to fill:

Benzonatate, a non-narcotic cough medication, 200 milligram, 21 pills;
Albuterol sulfate inhalation aerosol, (a bronchodilators used to prevent and treat wheezing, difficulty breathing, chest tightness and coughing), 90 micrograms (MCG);
Prednisone, (a glucocorticoid medication used to suppress the immune system and decrease inflammation in conditions like asthma and COPD), 50 milligrams, seven tablets;
Azithromycin, (an antibiotic), 250 milligrams – a five-day supply, starting with two on day 1, then one per day.

I wasn’t aware until I finally received the September 29 call from New Pharmacy Ventures, that in addition to hydroxychloroquine, the out-of-state supplier also was going to fill:

Zofran (to prevent nausea), four milligram, 30 tablets;
Doxycycline (an antibiotic), 100 milligram, 20 pills;
A Medrol dosepack (steroid), four milligram, one unit.

On Sunday or Monday, Amy said she wanted to be tested for Covid. I went online to schedule an appointment at the local CVS, even though I didn’t see the point of being tested. Her symptoms were consistent with Covid – and also consistent with the flu – but her loss of taste led us to assume that she did have Covid. The earliest appointment we could get was Wednesday afternoon, September 8, at 4:00 p.m.

By Tuesday, September 7, the day after Labor Day, Ryan seemed to be on the mend. He felt at least well enough that he considered going back to work. He didn’t. Amy didn’t appear to be improving, although she also didn’t appear to be getting worse. My expectation was that she would shortly follow Ryan’s timetable to recovery – if she could just hang in there for another day or two she would be fine.

From Sunday to Wednesday, Amy slept a lot, but also sat up watching TV, drinking hot tea and eating soup, Jello and applesauce – the usual flu foods.

After sending my unanswered text message for Dr. Mahmoud, and seeing no resolution to our lack of hydroxychloroquine, I started to research alternative methods of getting ivermectin. I had heard for many months that some people were taking ivermectin in the form of a horse dewormer paste that was available at animal supply stores. I had vaguely looked into it, but had no idea what the dosage should be or whether the claims about its danger to humans had any merit.

Doing further research online, I was able to make contact with two people who claimed to have been taking the horse paste and had not gotten sick with Covid. That led me to a few websites, one which had a video that offered precise information about correct human dosages according to body weight. The video was taken down soon after.

This was just about a week after CNN and other mainstream media stooges attacked and mocked Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan for taking horse dewormer as a Covid treatment. As it turned out, Rogan had not taken horse medication, but rather had taken doctor-prescribed ivermectin, along with other treatments, to kick Covid in about a day or two. Despite Rogan’s fast recovery, the attack stooges were in full force to discredit and vilify Rogan and ivermectin.

I also learned that horse dewormer that contained ivermectin was becoming hard to get because of supply and demand issues. Evidently, the inability to get human formulations of ivermectin at pharmacies caused a lot of people to desperately buy up the horse paste. On the supply side, it was reported that some stores were refusing to carry the product after they learned that people were taking it for Covid. Other stores had difficulty obtaining it because of efforts to keep the low-cost potential treatment out of the hands of the public.

On Wednesday, by the time I took Amy to CVS for her PCR Covid test, I had decided to stop by a local farm and animal store to buy some ivermectin – just in case. After she took her test in the CVS drive through, I asked Amy whether she wanted to come with me to the farm store. She wanted to go home. I dropped her off and went to the store.

The store was out of the horse dewormer. A clerk said she was expecting a shipment the following week and said somebody would contact me when it came in.

Shortly after I returned home, I suggested that Amy and I sit outside for a while to get some fresh air. Amy liked the idea. We spent about an hour in the front yard before she decided that it was time to go back inside. As we watched TV in the family room, Ryan came by to visit. Kyle visited shortly after. Amy was miserable and having trouble taking deep breaths. At one time, she suggested that she should go to the hospital.

I encouraged her to hang in there and assured her that she would be okay in a day or two.

Our feeling throughout the pandemic was that a hospital is probably the last place we would want to go for Covid treatment unless it was the last resort. In our discussions, we wanted no part of ventilators – which, recent research has shown, may be the worst treatment for Covid. We wanted no part of days, weeks or months of isolation while a hospital practiced agenda-driven medicine – like kidney destroying Remdesivir – while fighting against patients’ rights to try less-accepted treatments.

As Kyle left to drop in on a friend, Amy appeared to be sleeping while sitting up, and I dosed off in my chair. Kyle returned a short time later and commented on Amy’s bluish color. The details of the next few minutes are sketchy. I recall that Kyle detected a pulse, but noticed that Amy wasn’t breathing. He did CPR until the paramedics arrived.

Before taking her to Southwest General Health Center, a paramedic told me that Amy’s heart did stop, but they had restarted it.

“I don’t want to create false hope,” he said. “But that is a very good sign.”

Of all of the “first responders,” I believe paramedics are the true heroes. They perform miracles and save lives in the field that couldn’t be saved in an emergency room 20 or 30 years ago. The Strongsville paramedics did everything they could do. I was confident that Amy was going to be fine.

Thursday, September 9, 2021: A generous favor

Kyle, Ryan, Monique and I arrived at Southwest General and, after a short wait in a nearly empty emergency waiting room, we were taken back to a consultation room.

That didn’t seem good at all.

After a long wait, somebody came in to talk with us. I think it was the attending doctor, but I don’t remember. It may have been a nurse.

Amy was critical, I think he said. She had not regained consciousness, which he said is normal after being resuscitated. He didn’t necessarily sound pessimistic. After Amy is settled into the ICU, he said, we would be able to go up and see her.

We waited, relieved that Amy was still alive.

After a while, a nurse, I think, came in and told us about a delay. Amy had been swabbed for Covid and they were awaiting the test result. A little while later, he returned with the result.

She tested positive.

That meant that we wouldn’t be able to see her after all.

There isn’t anything you can do here, so I suggest that you go home, he said.

He provided the phone number to ICU and invited us to call as often as we wanted to for updates.

We drove home and had just pulled into our driveway when the phone rang.

It was Dr. Firas Seffo.

“Your wife isn’t doing well,” he started.

“Yes. I know that. I just left there.”

The doctor said Amy was likely to go again into cardiac arrest. What do I want them to do, he asked.

“You do everything you can do,” I instructed.

A few hours later, at 4:28 a.m., we received the call, on Amy’s phone, from the ICU nurse.

“Your wife didn’t make it,” she said. “You can come and see her whenever you want to.”

There was no hurry now. She was gone. I figured we could go back to the hospital later.

An hour later Amy’s phone rang again.

The nurse asked whether we were coming. We weren’t permitted to see her when she was alive, but there was suddenly a rush to view her lifeless body now.

Kyle, Ryan, Monique and I got in the car and travelled into the Twilight Zone.

The waiting room of the ICU was completely empty.

Covid protocols were still in place.

We were told that two of us could go in to see Amy’s body. We assumed that meant two at a time. So Ryan and I put on the spacesuits and masks and went into see the body of our wife and mother. When we came out of the room, we signaled that Kyle and Monique could go in.

The nurse intervened.

“We can only allow two,” she said.

After some pushback, she slightly relented.

“We can allow three, total,” she said, refusing to provide a logical explanation about why it was acceptable for two – or three – family members to view a body, but not all four in the group, going in two at a time. She recited more nonsense about Covid protocols – the same diet of preposterous prattle that the government, media and the medical establishment have been feeding the gullible masses since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We had to wake up our vice president at four in the morning to authorize a third visitor,” she scolded, emphasizing the favor she had just granted us.

The vice president who supposedly was rudely awakened to bestow her blessing on a shocked family, she said, was Marti Bauschka, vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer.

Recently, I left two voice messages for Bauschka, hoping to confirm that such an illogical conversation actually took place with the ICU nurse at four in the morning, and to get an explanation of such a ridiculous policy.

Bauschka didn’t return my calls.

PCR roulette: “Probably not infected”

Later that morning, the result of Amy’s CVS PCR test appeared in her email box.

I didn’t bother to open it. What difference would it make? Of course it would indicate that Amy was positive for Covid, just like her midnight test at Southwest General was positive.

About a week later I finally decided to open the results.

According to the PCR test taken at CVS, as of 4:19 p.m. on Wednesday, September 8, less than eight hours before her Southwest General test – and exactly 12 hours to the minute before she passed on, Amy was negative for Covid. The test results, per usual, did not specify the number of amplification cycles used to analyze Amy’s swab sample.

“You have tested negative for the COVID-19 coronavirus,” the results summary said. “This means you probably were not infected at the time your specimen was collected. However, that does not mean you will not get sick. It is possible that you were very early in your infection when your specimen was collected and that you could test positive later. Or you could be exposed later and then develop illness. In other words, a negative test result does not rule out getting sick later.”

Although Dr. Kary B. Mullis, the Nobel Prize winning inventor of PCR technology, warned against using the test to diagnose infectious diseases, this is the unreliable process that has driven global health policy and justified business closings, lockdowns and vaccine mandates for two years.

Just saying.

Officially, the cause of Amy’s death was cardiac arrest due to acute respiratory failure, due to Covid-19 pneumonia. She had been on a ventilator. Her blood glucose was 485. A range of 72 to 100 is considered normal. In a later conversation, Dr. Mahmoud speculated that Amy’s passing probably was caused by a blood clot – a pulmonary embolism.

We will never know

Suppose hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were not suppressed by the government and the medical establishment. What if I could have gone to Rite-Aid and picked up Amy’s prescription for hydroxychloroquine along with her other medications?

Would she be alive today?

We will never know whether or not it would have made a difference.

I question why it took New Pharmacy Ventures 24 days to get around to processing Amy’s prescription.

But even more, I question why perfectly safe medications are being withheld from sick patients by hospitals and pharmacies in Ohio and other states.

On July 29, 2020, the Ohio Department of Health announced a state ban on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of Covid, which was to go into effect on July 30. Previously, an “emergency” ban on the use of hydroxychloroquine had been in effect. The new order would have made it permanent.

Earlier, on June 15, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked an Emergency Use Authorization for hydroxychloroquine to be used to treat Covid patients. FDA cited “new information” that led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to conclude that the drug may not be effective to treat Covid and that the drug’s potential benefits for such use do not outweigh its known and potential risks.

Melanie Amato, spokeswomen for the Ohio health department, declared on June 29 that hydroxychloroquine “is not an effective treatment for Covid and that Board of Pharmacy rule 4729:5-5-21 of the Administrative Code would go into effect, prohibiting hydroxychloroquine from being sold or dispensed for the treatment or prevention of Covid-19.”

The next day, however, the ban was withdrawn, the health department said, as a result of feedback received by the medical and patient community.

“This will allow the (pharmacy) board to reexamine the issue with the assistance of the State Medical Board of Ohio, clinical experts and other stakeholders to determine appropriate next steps,” the pharmacy board announced. “Licensees should be aware that emergency rule 4729-5-30.2 is no longer effective and the requirements of that rule, including the inclusion of a diagnosis code on any prescription for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are no longer applicable.”

DeWine tried to spin himself as the hero in the reversal. The reality is that he buckled under a wave of backlash from the public.

When I read that hydroxychloroquine was about to be banned from Covid patients, I called State Rep. Tom Patton, who said he was unaware of the action. He also told me about a man he knew who was hospitalized with Covid. He recovered quickly after his doctor started him on hydroxychloroquine.

“He was one of the first people that I knew that actually got it (Covid),” Patton said. “Why would you take a tool out of the arsenal? I just don’t get it.”

Patton said his next call would be to DeWine. He texted late that night to say that he had not received a reply from the governor.

Pharmacies refuse doctor’s orders

With the ban lifted, why do Ohio pharmacies continue to refuse to fill prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin more than 19 months later?

On October 18, 2021, I contacted a local primary care physician to find out whether hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin could be prescribed in Ohio.

“Depending on the pharmacists now, believe it or not,” she texted. “Last time I tried to prescribe hydroxychloroquine, the pharmacist wouldn’t fill unless I verified that the person had an autoimmune disease. I haven’t heard much backlash from ivermectin. I haven’t routinely prescribed but I’m sure I would have heard something if were being denied. DeWine had to reconsider (the ban). He was trying to get the pharmacy board to flat out not allow it to be prescribed period. Enough of us MDs fought that. We already have enough restrictions on our licenses thanks to the DEA. The med should be between doc and their patient and no one else.”

I explained to her how we had to order hydroxychloroquine for Amy and Ryan from an out of state pharmacy. She responded, “If your doc wrote it, it’s utter bullshit the pharmacy wouldn’t (fill it).”

Cameron McNamee, spokesman for the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, confirmed during a phone conversation in November that there are no rules in Ohio that would prohibit a pharmacy from filling a prescription for hydroxychloroquine.

“There were some restrictions early on for hydroxychloroquine because there were shortages facing some people that used it for rheumatoid arthritis or lupus,” McNamee said, referring to the emergency ban. “So we had a rule in the early days that limited it for people who are actively tested positive for Covid-19. But now there’s no policy or special rule related to the dispensation of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.”

To emphasize, the health department justified its original emergency ban on hydroxychloroquine based on safety concerns about the medication. McNamee’s story is different. He attributed the ban to a shortage of supply.

The real Anthony Fauci

In his top selling book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests a nefarious explanation for the suppression of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from Covid patients. Here are some excerpts from the book:

“Beginning June 27. 2020, Dr. (Meryl) Nass began a list of deceptive strategies that the Fauci/Pharma/Gates cartel used to control the narrative on hydroxychloroquine and deny Americans access to this effective remedy.” (Page 34)
“There is no other aspect of the Covid crisis that more clearly reveals the malicious intentions of a powerful vaccine cartel – led by Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates – to prolong the pandemic and amplify its mortal effects in order to promote their mischievous inoculations.” (Page 19)
“From the outset, hydroxychloroquine and other therapeutics posed an existential threat to Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates’ $48 billion Covid vaccine project.” (Page 19)
“Prior to the Covid pandemic, HCQ and its progenitor, chloroquine were freely available over the counter in most of the world, including France, Canada, Iran, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and many other countries.” (Page 20)
“Some 200 peer reviewed studies (C19study.com) by government and independent researchers deem HCQ safe and effective against Coronavirus, especially when taken prophylactically or when taken in the initial stages of illness along with zinc and Zithromax.” (Page 21)
“No surprise, pharmaceutical interests launched their multinational preemptive crusade to restrict and discredit HCQ starting way back in January 2020, months before the WHO (World Health Organization) declared a pandemic and even longer before President Trump’s controversial March 19 endorsement.
On January 13, when rumors of Wuhan flu Covid 19 began to circulate, the French government took the bizarre, inexplicable, unprecedented and highly suspicious step of reassigning HCQ from an over the counter to a prescription medicine….This absolutely remarkable coincidence repeated itself a few weeks later when Canadian health officials did the exact same thing, quietly removing the drug from pharmacy shelves.” (Page 24)
The U.S. government in 2021 ordered the destruction of more than a thousand pounds of HCQ because it was improperly imported. (Page 24)
In March 2020, at HHS’ request, several large pharmaceutical companies – Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi and others – donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million doses of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA. BARDA’s director, Dr. Rick Bright later claimed that the chloroquine drugs were deadly and needed to protect the American public from them. Bright colluded with FDA to restrict the use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. (Page 25)
Prior to Covid not a single study had provided evidence against the use of hydroxychloroquine based on safety concerns. (Page 26)
In what Kennedy described as a “homicidal crusade against HCQ,” Fauci, Gates and WHO financed a cadre of research mercenaries to concoct a series of nearly 20 studies all employing fraudulent protocols deliberately designed to discredit HCQ as unsafe. Instead of using the standard treatment dose of 400 mg. Day, the 17 WHO studies administered a borderline lethal daily dose starting with 2,400 mg. (Page 26)
“The purpose seemed, very clearly, to poison the patients and blame the deaths on HCQ,” says Dr. Meryl Nass. (Page 26)

It worked. Patients died. Brazilian prosecutors have accused the authors of the study of committing homicide by purposely poisoning the elderly subjects in their study with high doses of chloroquine.

Another fraudulent study, Kennedy exposed, concocted fabricated data that concluded HCQ increased cardiac mortality in Covid-19 patients. The “research” was published in respected medical journals Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. When the con was exposed, even the elitist propaganda rag, New York Times, was compelled to report on it. Both medical journals retracted the research, which the Guardian, of the U.K., identified as “the biggest retraction in modern history.” Kennedy called it “momentous fraud.”

To date, Kennedy wrote, not a single legitimate study has shown hydroxychloroquine to be unsafe.

According to the Frontline Doctors, there are only two things that must be considered regarding a medication: Is it safe and does it work?

“HCQ is amongst the safest of all prescription drugs in the U.S.A. and that is why across much of the world it is sold over the counter,” the AFLDS White Paper says. “Hydroxychloroquine has been FDA approved for more than 65 years and has been used billions of times throughout the entire world without restriction. For many decades it has been given to pregnant women, breastfeeding women, children, elderly patients, immune compromised patients and healthy persons. It is the No. 1 most used medication in India, the second most populous nation on the planet with 1.3 billion people. If an American travels to a location where malaria is endemic, per the CDC, they would start HCQ before they left for their trip. There has never been an allegation that HCQ is not safe until 2020.”

And at a time when the world has become seized with panic over a virus without a specific cure, the question of effectiveness is almost moot, AFLDS said.

“If a drug is safe and might work and if there are no other options, we must try it.”

November 18, 2021. A talk with the pharmacy board

In November, I spoke with McNamee, pharmacy board spokesman to find out what the rules are for dispensing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Here is part of the conversation:

Ken: So if I were to be told by a doctor that they can’t write a prescription (for hydroxychloroquine) to be filled by an Ohio pharmacy because they won’t fill it and that they have to get it through an out of state mail order pharmacy, would that doctor be telling me the truth?

CM: I think, certainly there are levels of professional judgment that occur at the pharmacy level. That may be based on what the patient is taking – if they have drug interactions some patients – their insurance won’t cover it if it’s off-label use (the use of a drug to treat conditions other than those approved by the FDA). So there are a lot of things that can affect whether or not it would be dispensed by the pharmacy. The other option is doctors have the ability to personally furnish medication. So if there is a physician that doesn’t feel like they’re getting their needs met, for some reason, they, under their license, can also order from a wholesaler and provide medications to patients as well.”

Ken: But generally, if my doctor wrote a prescription and we went to, say CVS pharmacy, that pharmacist has no reason to tell the doctor, “I’m not going to fill this under Ohio rules.”

CM: Well, the pharmacist has what we call a corresponding responsibility. So they have to determine, like if you were to give us an opioid prescription, if it was something that based on your patient profile, the medications that you’re on and, you know, all the other facts and circumstances, the pharmacist has to make the determination whether or not that’s in the best interest of the patient.”

Ken: So a pharmacist can override a doctor’s judgment.

CM: Yes. Particularly – and we saw this a lot with the pill mills down in Sciotto County who were pushing out all the Oxycontin, the pharmacists were the first to sort of say, we’re not selling anything more because something’s going wrong with …

Ken: My question is specific to hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. So if a doctor wrote a prescription for hydroxychloroquine, why would a pharmacist choose on his or her own to say, no, I’m not going to fill that?

CM: So it’s back to the principle of corresponding responsibility. So I can’t speak to the specific instances of what all pharmacists would see in the patient profile or what that patient’s contraindications are with their conditions or any of those things. So it really is a discussion that that needs to occur between the doctor and the pharmacist to work out what’s best for the patient.

Ken: Okay. And does the pharmacist have a responsibility then to go back to the doctor – because that’s what one of the state legislators (Rep. Scott Wiggam, R-Wooster) told me – that if there was some sort of a conflict where a pharmacist refused or didn’t want to fill a prescription, maybe because of maybe some contra-indications of the medication or whatever that maybe the doctor didn’t see on the record, that the pharmacist has the responsibility to contact the doctor and say, you know, are you sure that you want to do this? Or whether we shouldn’t fill it because of this? So the pharmacist does have to have some correspondence with the physician.

CM: It’s general practice that they should reach out to the prescriber if they have concerns about what they’re what the prescription is written for. They work as a care team because they’re sort of the checks and balances when it comes to the distribution of prescription medications in the state.

I explained to McNamee that a doctor wrote a variety of prescriptions for two patients (Amy and Ryan), and said that she had to use an out-of-state pharmacy only for the hydroxychloroquine.

Ken: This happened during the month of September. You said that there were no rules or there was no reason why a pharmacy could not fill hydroxychloroquine. So if the doctor told me that, would the doctor had been lying about that – that there are no pharmacists or pharmacies in the state of Ohio during the month of September 2021 that would fill a prescription for hydroxychloroquine?

CM: Uh, I don’t think that that’s universally across the board. I don’t know what this doctor – there could be a number of things – he may be trying to direct them to a specific pharmacy.

Ken: Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to find out. So I guess on one hand, if the doctor is saying to two patients that your local pharmacy will fill these four (prescriptions), but they won’t fill hydroxychloroquine, so we have to write this one to a different – an out of state pharmacy. So for the doctor to say that – if the doctor’s lying in order to steer one particular medication to an outside pharmacy while still allowing the other four prescriptions to be filled locally – I’m not sure why the doctor would do that.

CM: I can’t, without knowing the specifics, but what I can say is that he may have had some issues in the past getting that medication dispensed. Is he in the state of Ohio practicing in the state?

Ken: Yes.

CM: So, I mean, there could be, without knowing the facts and circumstances, I can’t tell you that universally no one’s filling hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin prescriptions. All I can tell you is that there are a number of different Covid-19 therapeutics for people who are diagnosed with Covid that people can now get subcutaneously from a pharmacy, or there’s going to be new pills coming out from Pfizer that are approved for the actual treatment of active Covid. So, I mean, again, I can’t speak to his particular situation if he’s trying to direct you to a pharmacy or he’s just had experiences not getting them dispensed because folks (pharmacists) have questions about potentially the legitimacy of the script. I don’t know. I can’t really, you know, dive too deep into it without knowing the circumstances.”

McNamee said there are no blanket rules regarding disciplinary action for pharmacists who refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription without cause.

“If folks have concerns that they’re not getting their meds filled, that would be assessed on a case by case basis, looking at, you know, whether or not it’s a violation for the pharmacist,” he said. “So it’s not that it’s like automatic, the (the pharmacist) didn’t call the doctor, so you know, we’re going to fine you or take away your license, but I think it’s on a case by case basis. So if folks are experiencing any kind of denial of medications, encourage them to file a complaint with us and we can look into the matter and see what the issues are. And that’s really, without getting down into the nitty gritty, that’s my best advice for people that may feel like they’re not having their needs met.”

During a subsequent conversation with Dr. Mahmoud, also on November 18, she reiterated that there were no Ohio pharmacies that would fill a hydroxychloroquine prescription for the treatment of Covid at the time she spoke with Amy.

Since then, she said, she found an independently owned pharmacy in Columbus that filled prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin – but has stopped doing so.

“They used to fill the ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine until a patient from Florida, which I was referring to that pharmacy because they shipped overnight,” Mahmoud said. “And she said, ‘I’m going to complain you to the Ohio governor.’ So they stopped filling the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. These pharmacists are afraid to lose their license, their certification, whatever.”

Mahmoud said a friend of hers – a “Frontline Doctor” in Florida – was coerced to resign from his job at a hospital because he put Covid patients on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin – even after the patients improved.

“The pharmacists changed the orders and put the patients on Remdesivir, because it’s $5,000 versus $50,” she said. “And patients would deteriorate and get into renal failure and heart failure. I have been encountering this difficulty with a lot of pharmacists, which are declining to fill the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, or at least they fill the hydroxychloroquine but they don’t fill the ivermectin, and I don’t understand why. They say it’s not FDA approved. It’s dangerous, which is BS, because this medicine has been on the market for years and years, and we give it to our active deployees when they go overseas to Afghanistan and Iraq. If it’s not safe medicine, we wouldn’t jeopardize the health of our young, active duty.”

Mahmoud said she is not afraid to prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

This is something between God and me,” she said. “I believe I’m helping patients. I have a different personality. I lost my job already. I lost several jobs.”

A conspiracy?

“I’m so sorry for your wife,” Mahmoud said. “I don’t have explanation about this. It is a conspiracy. It’s tyranny, what I can tell you. You have my heart with you.”

I asked her to explain her suggestion of a conspiracy.

Ken: You say it’s a conspiracy. But the guy who I spoke to at the pharmacy board said that pharmacies can legally fill hydroxychloroquine. So if that’s true, if they can – CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, whatever – if they’re able to fill prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, why are they not doing that?

NM: What happens is they say it’s not FDA approved and it’s on their license and they have the right not to fill it. Last time I was arguing with a pharmacist in a 24-hour Walgreen in Columbus and he was very nasty. I said, ‘Hey, come on. It’s a safe medicine. What do you mean it is not FDA approved? The patient is very sick and hypoxic. He was almost dying on the phone as I’m talking to him – breathing very hard. I can hear him … Occasionally they can fill, but I have to fight with them.”

A clot

Before Amy passed on, I hadn’t been aware of cases where a person died so quickly after showing symptoms and while they were conscious and well enough to walk and eat. I asked Mahmoud about it.

“I will tell you what happened to your wife,” she said. “She probably had a clot. She probably threw a thrombus (a blood clot that occurs inside the vascular system). Her color changed because she did not have enough oxygen going to her lungs. She probably had a lung clot. She died from pulmonary embolism – a clot in the lung. That’s common with Covid, the way you’re saying that she breathed heavily, she was not coughing or anything.”

Talking to the pharmacists

Although McNamee confirmed that there is no prohibition on dispensing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in Ohio, pharmacies have taken it upon themselves to deny Covid patients with the treatment even when they – and their doctors – believe that it may be beneficial.

According to a pharmacist at the Strongsville Rite-Aid, on December 30, 2021, suppression of the treatments is corporate policy. In the case of hydroxychloroquine, the pharmacy will fill a doctor’s prescription unless it is prescribed for Covid.

Ken: Are you filling prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine?

RA: Like the 200 milligrams? Yeah.

Ken: You are. Are you filling prescriptions for ivermectin?

RA: No.

Ken: No. Okay. Why? Why not the ivermectin?

RA: We’re not supposed to, unfortunately. We were told not to by our, the corporate, you know…

Ken: Oh. Rite Aid corporate.

RA: It requires diagnosis code information on it. So it’s not something that, you know, we can just fill.

Ken: Okay. Any idea why corporate doesn’t want you to fill ivermectin?

RA: Because it’s not FDA approved unless it has a diagnosis code on it. I mean, if it has a diagnosis code for, you know, an FDA approved reason then yeah, we would be able to fill it, but…

Ken: All right. But, you are filling hydroxychloroquine though.

RA: Based off the diagnosis code. I mean, if they’re using it for Covid treatments then no. I mean, it wouldn’t be considered a legitimate prescription. But Plaquenil (a brand of hydroxychloroquine) has been around for a long time and lots of people are on it for like rheumatoid arthritis and whatnot, but I mean, it really depends on the diagnosis.

Ken: So if a doctor wrote it for Covid, then you wouldn’t fill it.

RA: We would have to consult with the doctor. I mean, it’s not a blanket, you know, one size fits all policy. We’d have to, you know, have to possibly have a discussion with the doctor.

Ken: Can you explain why, if these are things that are helping people get through…

RA: Oh, I agree with you a hundred percent. I mean, I would love to fill, you know, the prescriptions. It’s just something that, you know, it’s just the rules are, you know, are something that they make up and we have to try our best to follow them.

Ken: What would happen like if you guys, if you filled it, I mean, would you be fired or would you be fined by the FDA? How does that work?

RA: Yeah, probably something along those lines – fined by the FDA, possibly terminated.

Ken: It almost seems like the FDA’s isn’t as concerned about making people better as they are pushing some kind of an agenda or something.

RA: Yeah. I mean, hopefully in time they’ll approve it, but I mean, they just don’t have enough evidence to consider it a legitimate treatment, so, yeah.

That was generally the conversation I expected to have with an employee of a corporate pharmacy that Fortune magazine has ranked as the 150^th largest corporation in the United States by measure of total revenue. But I was flabbergasted by my conversation with a pharmacist at Marc’s, a Cleveland-based chain of discount stores that operates 60 locations – all in Ohio. A pharmacist at the Strongsville store, bluntly told me that it is she – not Marc’s corporate management – who makes the decision to ignore a doctor’s orders about the treatment of his or her patient.

Ken: Hi. I’m wondering if you guys fill prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine.

M: Hydroxychloroquine for, for what purpose – for Covid? It has to have a diagnosis and if it’s Covid, no.

Ken: Why not?

M: Because it’s not an approved use.

Ken: Approved use? So…

M: We don’t do it. We just period don’t do it.

Ken: Okay. Now, is that a Marc’s policy or is that something that goes up to the FDA? I mean, what…

M: I don’t know. I know we do not do it here.

Ken: Okay. And who decides …

M: The two pharmacists that are here and I know a number of my other associates – they don’t, we don’t fill it for that.

Ken: So it’s up to you then. It’s not a store policy – it’s up to the pharmacist.

M: I’m not sure if it actually is a store policy or not, but I know we don’t do it here.

Ken: You won’t do it. Okay. How about Ivermectin then? Same situation?

M: Same thing, same thing.

Ken: Okay, so that’s up to you. That’s not (Marc’s owner) Marc Glassman. That’s you?

M: I am not sure to be honest with you. I know we’ve talked about it and we’ve discussed that. I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s come down from corporate, but I don’t know any of our stores that do it.

KM: Okay. And is there a reason that you wouldn’t offer that if a doctor thought it might help their patient?

M: It’s not an approved use, so we’re not doing it.

Ken: You’ve heard of off label use though, right? So there are lots of medications that are filled by pharmacists off label for purposes that aren’t approved by the FDA. Would you agree with that?

M: All I can tell you, sir, is that we’re not doing it here.

Off label use

Off label use of an FDA approved medication is common. The term “off label” refers to the use of a medication to treat a condition that is not the condition that FDA approved it to treat.

Here is the explanation of off label use from FDA’s website:

Why might an approved drug be used for an unapproved use?

From the FDA perspective, once the FDA approves a drug, healthcare providers generally may prescribe the drug for an unapproved use when they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient.

You may be asking yourself why your healthcare provider would want to prescribe a drug to treat a disease or medical condition that the drug is not approved for. One reason is that there might not be an approved drug to treat your disease or medical condition. Another is that you may have tried all approved treatments without seeing any benefits. In situations like these, you and your healthcare provider may talk about using an approved drug for an unapproved use to treat your disease or medical condition.

What are examples of unapproved uses of approved drugs?

Unapproved use of an approved drug is often called “off-label” use. This term can mean that the drug is:

* Used for a disease or medical condition that it is not approved to treat, such as when a chemotherapy is approved to treat one type of cancer, but healthcare providers use it to treat a different type of cancer.

* Given in a different way, such as when a drug is approved as a capsule, but it is given instead in an oral solution.

* Given in a different dose, such as when a drug is approved at a dose of one tablet every day, but a patient is told by their healthcare provider to take two tablets every day.

If you and your healthcare provider decide to use an approved drug for an unapproved use to treat your disease or medical condition, remember that FDA has not determined that the drug is safe and effective for the unapproved use.

A third Strongsville pharmacy I called was CVS. At first an employee who was not a pharmacist answered my questions. He later turned the call over to the pharmacist.

Ken: Are you guys filling prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine?

CVS: What’s your date of birth?

Ken: No, I don’t have a prescription. I’m just asking generally. Do you guys fill prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine?

CVS: Hydroxychloroquine? Yes.

Ken: You are.

CVS: Mm-hmm.

Ken: Because a lot of people are telling me you guys, don’t so that’s why I’m kind of confused on that. So if a doctor …

CVS: No, we are.

Ken: So if a doctor writes a prescription for hydroxychloroquine you, you fill it. No problem.

CVS: Yeah. As long as it’s the right dosage and we have it in stock. Yes.

Ken: Oh, okay. And how about ivermectin? Are you filling that as well?

CVS: That’s, um, let me ask the pharmacist.

Ken: Okay.

CVS: The pharmacist said if it’s not for Covid, yeah.

Ken: If it’s not for Covid. I mean, even if so, if the doctor prescribed it for Covid, I mean, why, how come you can’t fill it for Covid?

CVS: . Um, let me, do you want to speak to the pharmacist? I don’t have a reason for you. Give me one second.

Pharmacist: CVS Pharmacy.

Ken: Hi. I just was talking to the guy and he said that you guys will fill a prescription for hydroxychloroquine, but not ivermectin. So, I’m just wondering why that is.

Pharmacist: I don’t think that’s what he communicated to you. We don’t fill those prescriptions for Covid reasons.

Ken: Either of them.

Pharmacist: Huh?

Ken: Neither of those for Covid even if a doctor’s judgment is such that it would help a patient?

Pharmacist: Yes, that’s correct. Even if it’s the doctor’s wish to use those prescriptions – those medications for Covid, we do not fill it for…

Ken: Okay. And can you tell me why that is?

Pharmacist: It’s a CVS policy. It’s not FDA approved, so we don’t do that.

Ken: Okay. And if you did, what would be the repercussions? Would you – I mean, who would be in trouble? Would you get fired or would CVS be fined by the FDA? I mean, what would, what would happen if you guys actually filled the prescription for that?

Pharmacist: Um, as far as the repercussions, I don’t know. I don’t know what it would be, but as a policy and as an ethical – for ethical reasons, we, we don’t fill it.

Ken: I mean, for ethical…

Pharmacist: So if we’re misled – if we’re misled to fill the prescription, then yeah. I mean, the repercussions would be, would fall upon the doctor then.

Ken: Oh, okay. But you think – the ethical thing would be to withhold a prescription that might be helpful or that somebody thinks might be helpful to their condition that’s plaguing the world right now?

Pharmacist: Well, if there isn’t data to support it and you’re taking that prescription away from another patient who has a FDA approved reason to take it, then yes, it is.

Ken: So there’s a shortage of it? So if someone got it for…

Pharmacist: It could create a shortage. Yes.

Ken: Got it.

February 8, 2022: Epilogue

As I was completing this article, the phone rang. It was February 8, 2022, at 1:10 p.m. – a day short of five months since Amy passed on. It was Charlie, from New Pharmacy Ventures. He wanted to speak to Amy.

Ken: This is Ken. This is Amy’s husband.

NPV: Gotcha.

Ken: Something I can help you with?

NPV: I’m calling from the pharmacy. We noticed that she has a couple of refills on her medication. So I’m just wondering, reaching out, trying to figure out if she was still interested in getting that or if she just wants to keep that on hold in the meantime.

Ken: And what’s your name?

NPV: My name is Charlie.

Ken: Yeah, I talked to you guys back at the end of September. So, I’ll explain this to you. You can see that the prescription was ordered by the doctor on, I think it was September 5.

NPV: Right.

Ken: And then you guys called to fill the prescription, I think it was September 29^th?

NPV: Yeah.

Ken: So you guys called like 24 days after the prescription was ordered by the doctor?

NPV: Yeah.

Ken: What took you so long?

NPV: That was an incident with – I know back in September we had a different call center that was trying to come out to people and it, it was honestly a very poor call center that we ended up hiring on. We actually had to let them go. So – and you might have been one of those cases where your script ended getting lost in transition from removing that call center and just giving them all to our pharmacy directly.

Ken: So you guys are dealing with it directly now, but you had a call center. Are you able to tell me the name of that call center that you used?

NPV: That, I’m actually not familiar with. The actual name itself – I know it’s not located anywhere, even near the pharmacy. I know it was like more towards the middle of the, the U.S.

Ken: Yeah. All right. So since you are doing it direct and not working with a call center, is there like a, lesser time to fill these prescriptions now?

NPV: Yeah. If you wanted to get them filled, we can get them filled today and then shipped out at the same time and then it could be already on your guys’ way.

Ken: Yeah. I mean, the, the question though is like, if a doctor, what if you guys were handling this your own without the call center and the doctor, you know, writes the prescription, are you able to turn it around right away?

NPV: For the most part. At this point we get a script written out or if the doctor writes out the script that same day it’ll get sent over to us. Sometimes it takes 24 hours for the system to get the actual script from the doctor’s office to us. And then at that point we reach out to the patient and we try and get contact with them, which sometimes doesn’t always happen right away, ‘cuz you know, people have lives.

Ken: Yeah.

NPV: So, but if we’re able to get ahold of ’em, we can fill it out that day and then get it sent out that same day.

Ken: Yeah. Because with Covid, you know, it’s kind of time is of the essence.

NPV: Right.

Ken: And so while my wife was waiting on those, like three weeks for her prescription to be filled, she died.

NPV: (long silence) Oh. I’m so sorry, sir.

Ken: Yeah. So the prescription was written on the 5^th and she died on the 9th. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference. It would’ve been nice to have been able to get her treatment. Maybe she wouldn’t be dead.