Common Errors

Pharmacy Errors Occurring After a Transition to Long-Term Care

May 8, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The dangers of prescription drugs have been well-documented over the past several decades. In most cases, a medication is made available only by prescription because it presents an increased risk of causing harm to a patient who should not be taking it. This can be due to an increased risk of negative interaction with other medications, an increased risk of abuse, potential side effects, or the ease with which a patient could accidentally overdose.

Prescription errors can occur any time a patient is given medication. While many of these errors occur at local retail pharmacies, a large percentage of prescription drug errors occur in long-term care facilities. Once a patient is discharged from the hospital, their medical records are supposed to follow them. However, the reality is that many of the prescription errors that occur in long-term care facilities occur shortly after a resident is discharged from the hospital. This is most often due to a miscommunication between the hospital and the long-term care facility.

A recent report discusses how the period of transition from hospital to long-term care facility is one of the most dangerous times for patients. The report notes that in many cases, patients in transition are in “crisis mode,” after having recently been admitted to the hospital. The patient most likely has seen several medical professionals, and they may be taking multiple prescription medications that they are not accustomed to taking. Thus, the patient is less likely to be able to catch an error before it occurs.

Human Error Is Not the Only Contributing Factor in Some Pharmacy Errors

April 24, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

When most hear that a pharmacy error was made, they assume that a busy pharmacist grabbed the wrong prescription, got the dosage information incorrect, or printed the wrong instructions. However, according to a recent industry news report, a large portion of pharmacy errors list information technology as a contributing factor to the error.

As health care technology advances, pharmacies are relying more and more on technology to fill in the gaps where humans are prone to making errors. These areas include patient records, dosage instructions, drug-interaction alerts, and receiving and inputting customer orders. In many cases, technology allows for fewer pharmacists to fill more prescriptions per day, which benefits both the pharmacy owner as well as the patient, who presumably will have reduced wait times.

As the report notes, however, technology is not perfect. According to the report, the most common errors involved the dosage of medication, including omitting the dose, including the wrong dose, or including an extra dose of medication in a patient’s prescription. While many of these errors will be caught before the patient ingests the medication, some of these errors will result in a patient’s injury.

Most Pharmacy Errors Are Preventable with the Exercise of Due Care

April 17, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

While pharmacists are certainly busy medical professionals, there is no excuse to cut corners or to engage in any shortcuts that could potentially put a patient’s life at risk. However, despite the importance of a pharmacist’s role in a patient’s overall medical care, there are often lapses in care or judgment that put recovering patients at an increased risk of re-admission to the hospital. Similarly, even patients picking up routine medications are put at risk of serious complications when pharmacy errors are made.

Legally, pharmacists have a duty to ensure that they provide a certain level of acceptable care. To be sure, this does not mean that a pharmacist can be held liable for every adverse drug reaction; however, when there is evidence that a pharmacist did not provide the adequate level of care, patients who suffered as a result may be entitled to monetary compensation for their injuries.

Proving that a pharmacist’s actions were legally deficient is not difficult in many pharmacy error cases, especially when the case involves allegations of the pharmacist providing a patient with the wrong medication or the wrong dosage of the correct medication. However, one of the most common areas in which plaintiffs run into problems is in establishing causation. Causation is an element in almost all pharmacy error cases that requires the plaintiff to establish that the defendant’s negligent act resulted in their injuries. In pharmacy error cases, this often requires the testimony of one or more medical experts.

Despite the High Prevalence of Pharmacy Errors, Pharmacists Resist Lawmakers’ Attempt to Impose Stricter Guidelines

March 13, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

By any account, pharmacists do not have an easy job. They often fill hundreds of prescriptions per shift, meet with dozens of clients for consultations, and must also maintain their internal inventory systems throughout the day. Pharmacists are human, and with these burdens being placed upon them day after day, it is no surprise that the rate of pharmacy errors is as high as it is.

According to one news report that discussed a study it conducted of Chicago-area pharmacies, 52% of all pharmacies surveyed failed to warn patients about a dangerous drug interaction. This study didn’t take into account other types of pharmacy errors, such as providing the patient with the wrong dose of medication or the wrong type of medication altogether. The news agency looked mostly at both independent and national-chain pharmacies, discovering that CVS had a failure rate of 62%, Walgreen’s had a failure rate of 30%, and independent pharmacies had a failure rate of 72%.

Due to the concerns surrounding pharmacy errors, lawmakers have recently started to try to implement stricter guidelines for pharmacists. The proposed changes would limit a pharmacist’s workday to 8 hours, require pharmacists take two 15 minute breaks and an hour lunch, and limit the number of prescriptions filled per hour and per shift. Despite the undeniably high error rates, some pharmacies and pharmacists have opposed the newly proposed laws.

Registered Nurses Too Often Fail as a Last Line of Defense Against Medication Errors

January 23, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The results of a recently published study emphasize the crucial role that registered nurses (RNs) play in maintaining accuracy in dispensing medications to patients receiving inpatient services at a hospital. The recently performed study discusses the most common medications that are subject to error, as well as the rates of harm to patients that occur as a result of errors made by RNs. Costly errors appear to encourage doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and the medical industry as a whole to issue guidelines in the hope of preventing errors. However, whatever harm these errors cause to the medical professionals who make them, the harm caused to innocent patients is significantly worse.

The Study Confirms the High Rates of Inpatient Errors Committed by RNs

An article in an industry news source (login required) discusses the recent study mentioned above. The study found that the majority of medication errors occurred in the medical-surgical units of the hospitals where they were conducted, followed by the intensive care units and intermediate care units.

Anticoagulant drugs were the most common type of medication to be associated with a medication error, and 10% of the total errors ultimately resulted in harm to a patient. Although 10% sounds like a low number, that still adds up to hundreds of thousands of patients each year who receive some type of medication error and thousands who suffer harm as a result.

Pharmacy Error Lawsuit Dismissed Because Plaintiff Names Wrong Defendant

January 16, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Supreme Court of Alabama recently released an opinion granting the appellant’s request for the state’s high court to intervene in the case and compel the trial judge to dismiss the plaintiff’s claim as time-barred. The statute of limitations for the plaintiff’s claim had expired shortly before the defendant’s motion was filed, and the motion was ultimately granted because the plaintiff had originally sued the wrong entity after an oversight was made. After the error was discovered, the complaint was not amended to include the proper defendant until after the limitations period had expired. Since the court found that the requirements for an amended complaint to “relate back” to an original filing and toll the statute of limitations were not met, the plaintiff will be unable to recover damages for his pharmacy error claim.

The Plaintiff Alleges That a Dangerous Mistake Was Made

The plaintiff in the case of Ex Rel VEL, LLC is a former customer of a pharmacy owned and operated by the defendant. In the events leading to the filing of the lawsuit, the plaintiff was allegedly given an antipsychotic medicine, Risperidone, instead of his blood-pressure medicine, Ropinirole. After taking the wrong pills for four days, the plaintiff allegedly experienced an adverse health event and was hospitalized, at which point the error was ultimately discovered. Claiming that he suffered permanent and serious harm as a result of the mistake, he pursued a pharmacy error claim against the pharmacy that made the mistake.

Most Common Pharmacy Error of 2016 Was a Pharmacist’s Dispensing of the Incorrect Drug

January 9, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has released a report that discusses the most common pharmacy errors of 2016 and strategies to prevent these errors from harming patients in the future. The ISMP is an industry trade association containing pharmaceutical companies, doctors, pharmacists, and other medical professionals that regularly conducts observations and releases data related to prescription errors and the dangers these errors present to patients. According to the report, the most common type of pharmacy error committed in 2016 was dispensing the wrong medication to a patient, although other dangerous errors, including dosage and patient mix-ups, also ranked high on the list.

The Classes of Drugs Most Affected by Medication Errors

The ISMP study concluded that certain classes of drugs are more commonly associated with medication errors than others. According to a recent report discussing the results of the study, medication errors are most commonly associated with opioid narcotics, antibiotics, antipsychotics, and insulins.

More errors are committed in dispensing the correct dosage of opioid narcotic medicines than any other type of medicine. This is in large part due to the significant variance in tolerance and dosage from patient to patient. For example, a dose that is appropriate for one patient could cause an overdose in another, and pharmacists must ensure that they have the correct prescription information when filling these prescriptions. If something looks wrong, the pharmacist should contact the patient’s doctor directly rather than fill the prescription and provide it to the patient.

New Study Shows that Many Pharmacies Fail to Detect Clearly Dangerous Drug Combinations When Filling Prescriptions

January 2, 2017 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

A recently published news report details an extensive study that was performed by the Chicago Tribune last year to evaluate and compare pharmacies’ ability to detect dangerous drug combinations being prescribed to the same patient and filled at the same time. The study involved researchers visiting over 250 Chicago-area pharmacies and filling five various prescriptions, including one “dangerous combination” of drugs. The researchers intentionally chose combinations of drugs that could cause a serious illness or death if taken together and that should not have been dispensed together.

Over Half of Pharmacies Missed the Deadly Combinations

Considering their decision to undertake such a large study, the researchers probably expected that a significant number of pharmacies would overlook the dangerous interactions and dispense the selected combinations to the undercover patient. However, the final results were stunning. Over half of the prescriptions containing deadly combinations with instructions for concurrent use were filled by the pharmacist with no discussion or objection.

There are measures in place and mandatory safety checks to prevent these dangerous drugs from being dispensed together, but the pressure to perform quickly discourages pharmacists from taking important safety measures.

Grandmother’s Death Resulting from Pharmacist’s Error Highlights Dangers of Overworked Pharmacists

December 15, 2016 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

While doctors prescribe medication to patients, they have to rely on pharmacists to fill the prescriptions correctly, and when pharmacists are overworked, errors increase—putting patients at greater risk.

There are a number of work conditions that may cause an increase in errors. For example, many pharmacists are required to fill a high number of prescriptions every hour. Some pharmacists claim they have too many prescriptions to fill in one shift in addition to receiving orders, talking to insurers, and counseling patients. A senior pharmacist interviewed for a recent report explained that some pharmacists are required to fill over 30 prescriptions an hour, which equates to two minutes per prescription. On top of that, pharmacists must also check for potential drug interactions for each prescription and counsel patients who have questions about their prescribed medications.

One study published in the American Journal of Health-Systems Pharmacy showed that overworked pharmacists lead to an increase in prescription errors. The study looked at prescription errors in a large hospital pharmacy and found the number of errors increased with the number of orders a pharmacist filled in one shift. Other pharmacists complain that they are required to fill general customer service duties in stores in addition to fulfilling their duties as pharmacists.

Victims of Dangerous Pharmacy Mistakes Shouldn’t Feel Guilty about Filing a Claim

December 1, 2016 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

It is common for the victims of prescription mistakes and other potentially dangerous medical errors to feel sympathy for medical professionals who made a mistake that could form the basis for a lawsuit. In fact, some victims decide not to report an error or make a claim because they feel guilty revealing a potentially career-ending mistake that was innocently made by a pharmacist or another medical professional.

Although this feeling is understandable, the victims of pharmacy errors should not feel guilty about bringing claims seeking damages to which they are entitled. In fact, pharmacy error claims ultimately benefit not only the retail pharmaceutical industry and pharmacists as a whole, but also the American people by helping form a professional and respected occupation that is responsible for the health and lives of our citizens.

Pharmacy Industry Report Discusses the Motivation Within the Industry that is Caused by Error Claims

An article recently published by a pharmaceutical industry magazine attempts to show the issue of pharmacy errors from a pharmacist’s perspective. In the report, one pharmacist is spotlighted, and he discusses the effect that pharmacy errors have had on his career. Referring to the errors as “inevitable” in the careers of pharmacists, the article demonstrates the idea that pharmacy error claims and lawsuits, and more specifically the desire to avoid them, provide a great deal of motivation to those in the pharmaceutical industry and may actually improve the overall quality of care by incentivizing accuracy when dispensing prescription medications.