Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

Pressure to Fill More Prescriptions Leads to Increased Error-Rate

December 1, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Pharmacies are businesses. They exist to make money. When a pharmacy wants to pad the proverbial “bottom line” this usually means cutting corners elsewhere. In a frightening news report out of Houston, reporters spoke to several former pharmacists and pharmacy experts who told them that the public has no idea what is going on and how common pharmacy errors really are.

According to one former pharmacist, recently some pharmacies like CVS have started using “metrics” to track the efficiency of pharmacists, encouraging them to fill more prescriptions per hour. The ultimate goal of these metrics is to allow management to cut back on the cost of staffing, only having the necessary number of pharmacists and pharmacist technicians on the floor at one time.

However, when pharmacies try and walk this fine line, they often push their pharmacists too hard, creating a dangerous situation where errors are much more likely to occur. As one former CVS pharmacist recalls telling his management team, “I kept saying we’re going to hurt a child or hurt a senior citizen.”

Pharmacy Error Leads to Elderly Woman’s Death

November 24, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in Glendale, California, a 90-year-old woman died after she was given a dosage that was 10 times higher than that which was prescribed by her physician. According to a report by CBS Los Angeles, the woman was prescribed a generic version of diltiazem, a medication for atrial fibrillation—an arrhythmia of the heart—by her physician.

However, when she took the prescription to get filled at a local pharmacy, the pharmacist who filled the prescription didn’t fill it properly. Instead of taking 30 mg, four times a day, the pharmacist provided her with instructions to take 300 mg four times a day. This resulted in the elderly woman taking 10 times the prescribed dose of the medication.

After a couple days of taking the high dose, the woman became unresponsive. She was taken to the hospital where she stayed for two weeks before she died. It was the day after her 90th birthday. The cause of death was listed by the medical examiner as “diltiazem intoxication due to pharmacy error.”

Elderly Woman Dies After Being Prescribed Three Times Her Actual Dose

November 17, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in the United Kingdom, an 85-year-old woman died when she took medication that was given to her by her pharmacist that was three times her normal dose. According to a report by one local news source, the woman was prescribed a 25 mg dose of a common anti-depressant medication. However, her local pharmacist admitted to giving her a box of 75 mg pills with a label on the package indicating it contained 25 mg pills.

Evidently, the elderly woman had been taking the same medication without incident since 1984. However, after taking the increased dose of medication for one month, the woman’s family began to notice that their loved one was confused and forgetful. In fact, one of her family members told reporters that they thought she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Not long after she began taking the triple dose of medication, the woman suffered a serious fall that caused her to break six ribs, puncture her lung, and caused her internal bleeding. About 10 days after the fall, she died as a result of the injuries she sustained.

Firefighter Given Adderall Instead of Anti-Inflammatory Drug

November 10, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier last week in Tennessee, a firefighter went to pick up a prescription for an anti-inflammatory medication for shoulder pain and was instead provided Adderall, a medication used to treat the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. According to one local news report, the firefighter immediately noticed that his heart started racing and he was feeling light-headed.

After a few days, he could tell something was not right with the medication. He told reporters that “I started noticing I was real jittery and even throughout the day I was just a bit jittery. I started having hallucinations, shortness of breath and I just really wasn’t feeling myself.”

He ended up calling the Walgreen’s that filled the prescription at 4:00 a.m. to ask if something was wrong with the prescription. As it turns out, he had been given another patient’s medication and had been taking 30g of Adderall twice a day for several days. The firefighter was admitted into the emergency room twice in two days and was given medication to slow down his heart rate.

Walgreen’s Pharmacy Error Causes Teen To Take Incorrect Prescription for a Month

November 3, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in Michigan, a teenager’s family discovered that he had been taking the wrong prescription for almost a whole month after they noticed that his mood was off and his schoolwork declining. According to a report by one local news source, the teen was prescribed medication for his ADHD that he was to take daily. However, when he went to fill the prescription, he was instead provided a generic version of Singulair, an asthma medication.

The teen’s parents noticed that he was acting off once he started taking the medication. He was “extremely feisty and bitey and moody, extremely moody, and his school work just went downhill, everything went downhill.” But the parents didn’t know what was wrong. At first, they thought that he was not getting enough of the medication, and that his dosage was off because he had grown since the dosage was last adjusted. It wasn’t until the teen’s mom looked at the bottle when she took it to get refilled that she noticed a problem.

Evidently, the bottle had the teen’s first name on it and his last initial, but it was for an entirely different patient. Making matters even more confusing, the correct address and prescription label was on the bottle. When they first filled the prescription, the teen’s mom trusted her son to take his medication as he should. In fact, he was doing fine taking it as needed until this setback.

New Study Finds that Child Medication Errors Occur Every Eight Minutes

October 23, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a newly released study by Pediatrics, it is reported that there are an astronomical amount of child medication errors that are occurring outside the hospital setting. According to one article that summarized the report, there are almost 64,000 medication errors annually in the United States involving children under the age of six. Twenty-five percent of these errors occur in infants under the age of one.

The report explains that each year, there are about 200,000 medication errors that occur outside of hospitals, and about 30% of these errors involve children under six. This comes to one medication error every eight minutes. Of course, the study can only deal with reported medication errors. The actual number of errors is expected to be much higher, since only a fraction of errors are reported.

Liquid medications are by far the biggest culprit when it comes to medication errors, resulting in a whopping 89% of all errors. As far as what was causing the error, the breakdown is as follows:

British Columbia Woman Dies When Pharmacists Fail to Catch Dangerous Drug Combination

October 16, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a frightening case out of British Columbia, a 76-year-old, otherwise healthy woman died when she was prescribed two drugs that were known to have dangerous interactions. According to a report by one local news source, the error slipped past the physician, two pharmacists, and the computer system that tracks drug interactions.

Evidently, the woman was on maintenance therapy for her colitis with a drug called mercaptopurine, an immunosuppressant. When the woman developed a case of gout, her prescribing doctor sent her to the pharmacy with a prescription for another drug. The two drugs were prescribed by the same doctor.

When she went to the pharmacy to fill her prescription for the new medication, no one at the pharmacy told her that the two drugs could be dangerous if taken together. The woman went home, continued taking her mercaptopurine, and started with the new drug as well.

Pharmacist Overprescribes Blood-Thinner, Causing Man to Cough Up Blood

October 9, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a frightening case earlier last month out of New Zealand, a man needed to be hospitalized after he started to cough up blood due to a pharmacist’s error. The pharmacist responsible was actually hired from a temp agency that staffs short-term employees.

According to one local news source, a 65-year-old man went to fill a prescription for warfarin, a blood-thinner and anti-coagulant used to treat blood clots. Instead of providing him the required dose of a single 1 mg pill, the pharmacist filled the prescription for five 1 mg pills.

The man took the medication as instructed and six weeks later was complaining of extreme abdominal pain and constipation. He was hospitalized when he started coughing up blood and urinating blood. The man was taken off warfarin and placed on vitamin K instead. After five days in the hospital, doctors felt that he was okay to return back home. There is no indication as to what, if any, long-term effects the man may experience as a result of the overdose.

Pharmacists Told To Keep Similarly Named Medications Away from Each Other

October 2, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Pharmacists are charged with a very important duty in our society: to verify and fill prescriptions issued by physicians and to answer any patient questions that may arise. In addition, pharmacists are a second line of defense against physician error, checking prescriptions against other medications that the patient is taking.

However, with the burden on pharmacists increasing as more and more people obtain healthcare, it seems that corners are being cut, potentially increasing the risk of a pharmacy error.

In fact, one report recently released by Pharmaceutical Journal discusses a recommendation that pharmacists keep similarly named medications physically apart from one another to reduce the chance of confusion.

Michigan Woman Narrowly Avoids Serious Injury After Pharmacy Error

September 22, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in Portage, Michigan, one local woman caught on to an error by her pharmacist that may have saved her life. According to a report by a local news source, the woman was provided a prescription by a local Wal-Mart pharmacy that belonged to another patient not once, but twice.

Evidently, the woman takes an unknown medication daily and has her prescriptions filled at the local Wal-Mart pharmacy. However, last month she noticed that her daily pill looked a little larger than normal. She checked the label and saw that there was another patient’s name on it.

The woman did not disclose what medication she was supposed to be taking, but it is known that the prescription she was given was for a 78-year-old woman’s heart condition. There is no indication that the 78-year-old woman was provided any medication other than what she was prescribed. It’s possible she had not yet picked up her prescription.