Official Pharmacy Owners

We closed on the pharmacy yesterday and are now the official owner's of Abts Pharmacy and Gifts. It was actually a bit anticlimactic. We had so many errands to run while we were in Denver that we didn't even celebrate the moment. We did pick up "Nama" (Melissa's mom) from the airport and she entertained Sheinah for the whole ride home which was a blessing.

First day at the pharmacy was very, very bad courtesy of our friends as the insurance companies. Here's what happened, all pharmacies have to register with a place called NCPDP which gives the pharmacy a special number that identifies the pharmacy. We got our number assigned to us a few weeks ago. The application asks when the transfer of ownership of the pharmacy will be completed so that the old number can be "turned off" and the new one "turned on". Pharmacies cannot have two numbers so the switch date is very important. Insurance companies use this number to identify pharmacies for payment. When a pharmacy transfers ownership, the new owners have to renegotiate contracts with every insurance company. We've been working on that for over a month, but the companies all require a bill of sale to complete the transfer. Since we didn't have that until yesterday afternoon, all of our applications are pending.

Now, back to that all important switch date. We didn't understand what the form was asking when it wanted the date of the completion of the transfer so we put in the date of closing. This means they turned off the old number yesterday and turned on ours today. Doesn't seem like a problem until you realize that none of our contracts with the insurance companies are active!! This means we couldn't process any prescriptions (or get paid for them which is kind of an important thing). It took Melissa 3 hours on the phone before she figured out the problem. We got to pay $150 to get the old number turned back on...gotta love the government. Once we figured it all out and switched all the numbers back, all the insurance companies worked...except one called Humana. Melissa spent no less than 2 hours being bounced back and forth between different phone numbers at Humana and still never got a person who could fix the problem.
This probably doesn't sound all that bad still until you factor in the fact that Melissa hasn't filled a prescription in 4 years and had to learn an entirely new computer prescription processing system all while working in an environment that is stuck in 1989.

While Melissa was dealing with pharmacy payment issues, Travis was struggling with a fax machine that wouldn't work and trying to get us a State Sales Tax number so that we could order flowers for the flower shop. The application would take 3 weeks to get processed if we mailed it (they won't accept a fax) but could be processed instantly if we did it in person. The problem...the guy in Fort collins is on vacation for a week so Travis would have had to drive all the way back to Denver (6+ hours round trip). The supplier rep was in Julesburg to meet with Melissa (who hardly spoke to him because she was on the phone with insurance companies) and he volunteered to turn the application in for us. It ended up taking him 2+hours to deal with all the problems with that application. Poor guy was trying to help us and ended up spending his whole day at a government office.

Oh yeah, and every few minutes someone would come in to meet the new owners which neither of us could really enjoy because we were so distracted by all the problems. Did we mention that Melissa never left the pharmacy between 7:45am and 6:30pm...yuck! Luckily, Jackie did an amazing job with the girls. They had a blast with their Nama!!

All in all, it was one heck of a first day for us. A little margaritas has softened our memory of the day a bit but we figured we should chronicle the truth for posterity sake. We appreciate your prayers that our insurance problems will get resolved tomorrow and that we would be able to enjoy our second day much more than the first. All the folks who came in were so incredibly welcoming and Julesburg is a really wonderful place. Stay tuned for more installments of the saga of Julesburg.