Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the misuse of medication results in over one million adverse drug events every year. In a recent blog, our attorneys discussed the current efforts made by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) to establish a universal standard for prescription drug labels and instructions, by issuing a series of recommendations in order to add more consistency to prescription labeling—to reduce medication errors that can result in personal injury or wrongful death.

The USP is a Maryland-based nonprofit organization that issues standards that are legally enforceable for the quality, strength, and purity of medicines in this country. In 2007, the USP developed the Health Literacy and Prescription Container Labeling Advisory Panel to examine the different ways prescription drug labeling could be improved.

The IOM claims that health literacy affects ninety million adults, who are unable to benefit properly from the health care due to a lack of understanding of drug instructions and information about medication interactions. After the IOM called for new drug label standards, the USP panel recently released recommendations that are based on patient well being, and health literacy—as bad health literacy can cause medication errors, and increase the potential for heath risks and personal injury.

According to Joanne G. Schwartzberg, co-chair of the panel, standardizing the medication labels can markedly improve the health and safety of patients, by providing reliable, simple and straightforward information. The USP panel recommendations cover the appearance, content, format and languages on prescription labels, in an effort to optimize patient understanding, and eliminate medication error and misuse.

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As our Baltimore, Maryland pharmacy error injury attorneys reported in a recent blog, pharmacy errors or misfills can happen in every step of a prescription’s path in a pharmacy. Many factors can lead to prescription error, including misunderstanding a doctor’s handwriting, making mistakes with prescription codes or abbreviations, and misreading a patient's medical conditions or medication list, among others.

In a recent pharmacy mistake lawsuit, filed last month, Charles Stevens, 70, was given a prescription for Lomotil, an anti-diarrhea medicine that he dropped off to be filled at his local CVS Pharmacy in Santa Barbara, CA in 2009. When Stevens picked up his prescription, he was allegedly mistakenly given a prescription for Warfarin Sodium, a medication prescribed for blood-thinning. Stevens was reportedly already taking blood-thinning medication, and after taking the prescription misfill, he suffered major bleeding, and was immediately taken by his wife to the hospital.

Stevens and his wife are reportedly suing CVS for pharmacy negligence, and pharmacy malpractice, claiming that the pharmacy failed to read the prescription correctly, misfilled his medication bottle with incorrect drugs, and failed to properly analyze Stevens’ medication profile, which could have prevented the medication mistake.

CVS reportedly has a patient profile mechanism that is used to protect patients from such dangerous drug errors as well as dangerous drug combinations, or repeat or double-diagnoses. According to Stevens' attorney, CVS reportedly admitted to the pharmacy mistake and Stevens’ lawyers are asking for over $200,000 in damages.

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According to recent news that our Washington D.C. pharmacy error injury attorneys have been following, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has committed to reduce medication mistakes by publishing a draft guidance by the end of this fiscal year. The FDA states that one third of medication errors, including 30% of errors ending in deaths that are reported to the Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), may occur as a result of drug labeling and packaging.

The FDA reportedly claimed that medication errors often happen as a result of names that look alike or sound alike, encoded numerals, failure to recognize active ingredients, dangerous medical abbreviations, and name length.

In a FDA workshop last month, Carol Holquist, RPh and director of FDA’s Division of Medication Error Prevention and Analysis reportedly claimed that guidance on these medication mistake issues is an important first step to developing a consensus to form new FDA regulations, which can take around 10-15 years.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP)’s director of Medication Use Quality Improvement, Bona Benjamin, also reportedly told the workshop group that the ASHP’s 2007 recommendations for the FDA are still current—that human factoring should be applied scientifically to drug packaging and labeling, and barcode verification should be encouraged, as nearly 20% of hospitals are using barcode medication verification.

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In recent news that our Baltimore, Maryland pharmacy error injury lawyers have been following, a Texas woman filed a lawsuit against Walgreens last week, claiming that a pharmacist mislabeled her medication—a mistake the woman claims, that could have caused her wrongful death.

According to Jessica Soliz, a Walgreens pharmacist made a major pharmacy error when labeling her prescription for seizure medication. After Soliz picked up her prescription drugs from the pharmacy and began taking them, she reportedly became very ill. The prescription error wasn’t discovered until a nurse looked at the label, and realized that prescription was mislabeled to read that each pill contained 25 milligrams of Lamictal, when in fact each pill in the bottle contained 100 milligrams or the drug.

According to the FDA, the most common medication errors are due to wrong doses, incorrect drugs, or the incorrect administration of drugs. The Institute of Medicine reports that there are around 1.5 million medication error injuries that happen every year, with at least 7,000 deaths.

In Soliz’s case, Walgreens responded that they were sorry that this pharmacy error occurred. They stated that they take pharmacy safety seriously, and are constantly working to improve the quality, accuracy and service of all pharmacy orders, to prevent pharmacy error injury or wrongful death.

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