I am a pharmacist who has completely embraced the lchf and IF way of life. What seemed at first to be the greatest help i could actually provide to my patients is proving to be impossible - improving health through diet.
Here’s the story.
I work at a big retail chain and I have to make phone calls to diabetic, hypertension and statin patients about their medications. The whole purpose of this is to get people to take them exactly as prescribed and never miss a dose. (The real reason for the push is insurance companies reimbursements decrease if patients don’t take their medications on schedule). Calling them about hypertensive and diabetic meds, although an awkward conversation, is no problem because sometimes I can talk to them about changing the sugar flow into their body. The part I struggle with is advising ALL diabetics to be on a statin. This is a metric that the insurance companies use to decrease our reimbursement and ultimately pay us less for every prescription. I don’t know how I can recommend to patients and prescribers that a statin needs to be added in every diabetic when I question the validity of this guideline.
My job is literally starting to depend on this. If we can’t improve the patient’s adherence and start statins, we will lose contracts with insurance companies. Our hours have already been decreasing and I have been told that if we don’t fix this we will lose more. Morally I don’t think I can promote a therapy that I find questionable at best.
Any other health care providers have any ideas?