I get my Omnipods every 3 months from Edgepark, and EVERY THREE MONTHS they run me around at the last minute and my supplies are 1-2weeks late. I call the month before I’m out of supplies, they tell me they have everything they need, and to call on the date they were last processed. So I call- “oh well they are processing” Well I’m out of supplies what are you waiting on? Nothing it just needs to process. I call every day. Finally, usually after I end up in the hospital after passing out, they realize- Opps, something is missing, which takes another couple days to get, then process, then shop the order to me. On my older Medtronic pump, you were supposed to wear it for 5 days- but if there was still insulin in it, it would still work. I fill my Pod to 100 units to hear the beep, but only use about 20-25units/day
*Shoot, conflated Dexcom and Omnipod. *
The other option would be to submit a Omnipod request for early pod failure. They typically mail them out in a couple days. There are ethical concerns, of course, but one may argue Omnipod’s supply chain failures are putting you in a place where you have no other options. Its better than being in the hospital, of course.
“Is there ANYWAY you can wear your Omnipod longer than 80hrs?”
Technically it would be possible. But the 80 hour limit resides on the pod, not the PDM. So you would need to open the pod, hack the countdown timer which is embedded on the board, and then close the pod back without damaging the reservoir and insertion mechanism.
“Realistically is there a way you can wear your Omnipod longer than 80hrs?”
Nope.
If you search FUD for EdgePark you will find quite a few threads but very few of them are complimentary. I’ve experienced the same delays as you in the past and I (well, my wife, I couldn’t deal with it) have had EdgePark blaming the insurance company while the insurance company blames EdgePark.
None of this helps you of course. What might help is that I managed to avoid the worst problem (running out) by initially starting with a 1-pod-per-two-days prescription. This is by far the easiest solution as it would allow you to build up an adequate supply. This is also the medically correct solution - you really are running out of pods and have medical evidence to prove it so your doc should be prescribing more pods! In fact he or she should have already done that IMO.
Once you have a stock you just drop the refill rate. This will, unfortunately, cause yet more issues with EdgePark because they are simply unable to deal with the concept of the prescription not being filled every three months but so long as you are stuck with EdgePark I would strongly advise oversupply based on my own horrible experiences.
My insurance company actually forced me to find a better solution. They swapped to treating pods as a prescription item, not DME, and this terminated EdgePark with extreme prejudice; EdgePark messed everything up, billing was incomprehensible, supplies; well I think of EdgePark as something like a Las Vegas slot machine. In this case when I pulled the arm it came off in my hand and I ended up with a moderate supply of pods and a $ refund.
At that point I swapped to getting the things from a pharmacy; this has worked out really well. I do have to fill every month but the pharmacy I ended up using is really, really good; I can telephone them, I can talk to people who actually recognize me and who know how to fix problems even when they are my PCPs issues, they FedEx me the pods, they get here (my home, not some pharmacy 25+ miles away) the next day. Of course not all pharmacies are equal and some with the same name are more equal than others.
You can talk to your insurer about swapping to a pharmacy benefit. Bear in mind that it might be a different price - less or more - if that matters to you (it doesn’t make any difference to me by the end of the year). You generally get 1 month at a time, which can make the start-of-year costs more bearable.
If/when you swap to the O5 swap soon and use later; i.e. exhaust your supply of the older pods before using the new ones. This ensures you have a stock built up.
These days I still do the 80 hour thing; I don’t work for the man so I don’t mind getting up at 2AM to swap out the pod, well, not any more than I mind doing it at 2PM. Consequently I’m on a 3-day prescription which I can fill every 25 days and which gives me 10 pods lasting 33.3 days. So I gain more than 8 days supply every month. This means I hardly ever contact Insulet about failed pods; I did so recently because I a recurrent failure resulting in multiple pod loss. Insulet sent me multiple pods and a PDM to deal with that (OMG, give me the O5 so I can have a reliable PDM!)
Thank you. That’s a good idea- I have an appointment with my Endo on Monday and will ask her😊