Johnson Policies Regarding Online Pharmacies.
- First, I apologize that you’re in the middle on something that’s between ME, and the online pet pharmacy.
Let me rush to tell you that I will prescribe through a human pharmacy that carries pet products.
- It’s not about selling medicine. It’s about the fact that human pharmacies are regulated to human legal standards and pet pharmacies are playing in the shallow end of the legal kiddy pool. And violating a thousand requirements for human-pharmacy-legitimacy, every day.
- Human pharmacies DO carry pet products. And they’re authentic**.
- I will not phone, write or otherwise authorize prescriptions to online PET pharmacies. This is on me, not my employees. It’s a decision that may cost me some clients but that’s fine with me.
- If I authorize a prescription to the online pharmacy of (or directly to) a legitimate brick and mortar pharmacy there will be a prescription fee*.
This has to do with my going to school for eight years and earning a doctorate. I do not have the privilege of just writing prescriptions without risk, consideration, nor documentation. One cannot just demand a prescription without me having to go into the record and make sure it’s timely, indicated and even dosed correctly.
Half the prescriptions that 1800Petmeds sends to me for authorization are ILLEGAL.
Someone also has to keep up with the scripts I authorize. When I write scripts to legitimate pharmacies, records are kept, and appropriate. Honestly, it’s WAY more labor intensive and time-consuming for us when I have to write / call prescriptions in.
Again, I’m happy to call / write a script to a legitimate human-compliant pharmacy, it’s really not “the money” – because if it was, I would not phone / call them in at all.
Here’s an example of what I mean by “pet” pharmacies lack legitimacy: 800PetMeds was initially “certified” by NAPP (National Association of Pet Pharmacies.) And guess what? They OWNED that certifying organization. They were LITERALLY certifying themselves. There’s the ethics. When they got caught they changed to another ‘accrediting’ pet pharmacy organization. It’s not worth my time to see if they own that one, too. However, that’s kind of sketch, too.
Fake heartworm prevention and flea control are infinitely better risk to make a fifty-dollar bill than actual counterfeiting because there is no penalty. Just a cease and desist.
*Prescription fee: 1/2 what my doctor charges me for a prescription refill called / written in.
**There is no law that punishes selling counterfeit pet products, even prescription ones. There is a ‘cease and desist’ and counterfeit products may be confiscated. However, selling counterfeit products and products obtained from unauthorized global markets will destroy a human pharmacies’ accreditation. Hence the lack of accreditation of pet pharmacies that sell counterfeit and misdirected products all day long.