Pharmacy Tips

Helpful tip for Omnipod users. 

If you are using 65+ units of insulin a day and your doctor has written your prescription for more than 65 units per day, your insurance may cover Omnipods for every 2 days instead of every 3 days! Talk to your doctor, have them write the Omnipods for every 2 days and see if your insurance will cover it. The insurance company may require a Prior Authorization, but it will be worth it.

Helpful tip for Insulin Pen users.

If your prescription says, "use up to x units daily", you might not have the correct amount of medication to last you the correct number of days. If your pharmacy didn't reach out to the doctor for more information, they might have calculated your Days of Supply wrong. Days of Supply or DOS is how long a certain amount of medication will last you.

IF your pharmacy didn't reach out to get the max number of times you are injecting so they can factor in the priming dose, then your DOS is wrong.

Ex:

5 pens (1 box) of Humalog (which is 100 units/ml), with the directions use up to 80 units daily, and no other information can be calculated as a 18.75 DOS.

BUT, if we add in injecting up to 6 times a day, THEN the DOS is 16.3 days.

A 2-day difference may not seem like a lot, but if you get 6 boxes of insulin pens then that is a 15-day difference!! Imagine if you used 80 units daily, you would be shorted 15-days worth of insulin for a 3-month supply!! That is half a month!

I have come across a lot of pharmacies that were not trained to account for priming doses! I know, as patients, it is not your job to make sure that pharmacies are calculating accurately. But you need to ensure you are getting what you need to survive!