Do I have any legal recourse? Pharmacist violated my privacy?!

Do I have any legal recourse? Pharmacist violated my privacy?

Ok here's the story. I have chronic low back pain. I've had it for almost a decade. I've had surgery, physical therapy, shots, you name it. Pretty much the only thing that helps is stretching, hanging on my inversion table, and medication. Norco works best.

Anyway, I've been seeing a specialist and getting meds from them, but I recently began having more pain due to an accident, so when I called my specialist and told them, they said, just take more of your pills. So I did, and I ran out before I could get them refilled. I called the specialist again and they told me to see my primary care doc if I needed more meds. So I did, and he wrote me a prescription for some Lortabs.

I took this prescription to a pharmacy, and later in the evening I got a call from them saying that they could not fill the Lortab prescription until they verified some information from my doctor. Apparently my insurance company told her that I recently had a pain pill script filled.

4 weeks ago
So this pharmacist told my primary care doctor that I had already gotten pain medication from my specialist, and she somehow convinced him that I didn't need the pills and he ended up changing my prescription from Lortab to Ultram, which does nothing for me at all. I am furious and I'm in excruciating pain. Just sitting here typing this is causing the pain to become worse, but I wanted to post this and find out if anyone knows if I have any sort of grounds to hire a lawyer over this.

To me, the pharmacist violated my privacy and divulged information (withouth my permission) to my doctor. The result was me not getting the medication I need. I already explained the entire situation to my primary doctor, and he wrote the script with no problems. Then this pharmacist talked him out of it and he changed the script.

Anyway, that's basically what happened. Now I'm stuck without my meds for almost 2 weeks and I just don't know how I'm going to live with this pain for that long.

4 weeks ago
Okay more details: I just got back from one of those urgent care centers, and the doctor wrote me a prescription for pain pills. I took the script to a grocery store pharmacy that I've never used before, and told them that I would be paying cash for them. I had no problems whatsoever getting these meds. So basically, it was my insurance company's fault that I didn't get the Lortabs the other day. It had nothing to do with my name being "flagged", or the grocery store pharmacy would have rejected it.

Something else I'd like to add.. the day I dropped off the Lortab script, after the pharmacist said she had to verify it with my doctor before she would fill it, I told her to just give me back the script and I'd have it filled somewhere else (and not use my insurance, the pills are pretty cheap). Well guess what? They couldn't find the original script from my doctor. It was in their system but they couldn't find the paper copy. Doesn't that seem a bit suspicious?

As a pharmacist I can assure you that he has a legal responsibility to monitor your prescription history within his means. Should you have an accidental overdose due to multiple prescriptions for the same type of medication from several doctors, he has legal liability for the outcome. He also has a legal duty to inform your physicians of apparent duplication and overuse of medication. Wouldn't you want him to inform your doctor of a potential drug interaction or allergy to medication prescribed? Believe it or not, he is looking out for your best interest besides fulfilling the legal requirements of his profession.