tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28450497.post-45117800880947653182008-02-07T20:47:00.000-05:002008-02-07T20:47:00.000-05:00"How much responsibility should a wholesaler have for the behavior of its customers?" Good question. <BR/><BR/>Thirty years ago your primary wholesaler sent a rep into your pharmacy once a week. That guy (they were all men and they all wore neckties and suits or at least sport coats) knew what your store was doing and if he caught a whiff that something funny was going on, he passed the word up the ladder to the warehouse manager who would call his connection at the state board or division of drug control who would then make a visit and inspection. And if your CDS purchases exceeded some kind of base percentage, the wholesaler would make a call to the board and you'd get inspected. If you were running a clean store, you had nothing to worry about.<BR/><BR/>Today, you might see a wholesaler rep in your store once a quarter and since they've all gone regional, the warehouse VP probably doesn't even know how to reach the state boards in any state but the one he's in. <BR/><BR/>So if a pharmacy is doing $40K a month with a wholesale facility and 90% of that is CDS, but most of that is generic (generating higher profits) it's entirely possible the facility would rather not "rock the boat" and jeopardize the good numbers the pharmacy is generating for that facility.<BR/><BR/>Of course, I may be totally off-base speculating about the motives of my hypothetical wholesaler. But retail pharmacists are expected to exercise diligence and caution about the prescriptions we dispense--why not hold the wholesalers to a smilar standard?<BR/><BR/>Tom Connelly, RPh<BR/>Sun Pharmacy<BR/>Rising Sun, MDAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com