Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

Massachusetts Pharmacy Owners Facing 25 Counts of Murder for Using Expired Ingredients in Medications

January 15, 2015 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in Boston, the Associated Press reported on a story of a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy that was under criminal investigation for over 25 deaths caused by medication that the pharmacy created. According to the report, the case is the largest in U.S. history to be brought against a pharmacy and alleges that the owner of the pharmacy and 14 former employees were engaged in criminal conduct in the creation of medication using expired ingredients.

Evidently, the New England Compounding Center employees are charged with knowingly using expired ingredients as well as failing to follow cleanliness standards that ultimately resulted in over 750 cases of illness and 64 deaths nationwide.

According to the article, the federal government recently seized over $18 million in funds that were being transferred into and out of accounts with various owners’ names on them. The seizures spanned 13 financial institutions and dozens of transfers.

Error-Prone Pharmacist Gets License Reinstated by Judge

January 8, 2015 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Just a few weeks ago, a Superior Court judge in Rhode Island reinstated the license of a pharmacist and state senator who had been found responsible for several serious pharmaceutical errors. According to one local news report, the pharmacist had committed several errors, including providing morphine to two children back in early 2012.

Evidently, one of the two children provided morphine was an 11-year-old girl who was prescribed medication for her acid reflux. Upon getting home and taking the medication, the girl’s parents noticed that she became extremely lethargic. They took her to the hospital, where they found out that she had ingested morphine that was in her acid-reflux medication.

In an initial determination, the Department of Health revoked the pharmacist’s license for fear that another error may result in the loss of human life. However, the Board of Pharmacy recommended a mere 2.5-year suspension.

Grandfather of Eight Killed in Medication Accident

December 22, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this year in November, an 83-year-old grandfather of eight died after he was provided the incorrect medication by a pharmacist. According to a report by one local news source, the man attempted to fill a prescription for paracetamol to help with the pain that an ulcer on his foot was causing him. However, he was provided with Verapamil, a medication used to treat high blood pressure.

Evidently, after the man phoned in his prescriptions, the delivery driver for the pharmacy came to the man’s home to deliver the medications, but the man was not home. Later, the head pharmacist himself delivered the medication to the man’s home on his way home from work. However, on his way out the door he grabbed the wrong prescription.

When the pharmacist delivered the medication, the man took the medication without reading the labels. When the pharmacist realized the mistake he had just made, he drove back to the man’s home to tell him that there should be no adverse effect from taking the wrong medication. However, hours later the man woke up complaining of shortness of breath and was taken to a nearby hospital.
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CVS Pharmacy Mixes Up Prescription, Man Sent to Hospital

December 15, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier last month in Oklahoma City, a man was admitted to the hospital after taking another person’s medication that he was given at a local CVS Pharmacy. According to a report by one local news source, the man had just gotten his wisdom teeth taken out and was prescribed antibiotics and a strong dose of Ibuprofen. However, when he went to get the prescription filled, he was given someone else’s medication.

Evidently, after taking the wrong medicine for a couple days, the man’s wife noticed that he was acting different. He was sick and acting as though he was drunk each time he took the medication. As it turns out, he was taking anti-depression medication that was prescribed to another customer. He took a hefty dose of 300 mg, which was the prescribed dose of the ibuprofen he thought he was taking.

After he was admitted to the hospital, doctors determined that he would be fine. However, he was suffering from heart palpitations and extremely high blood pressure for those few days when he was taking the medication. A CVS representative told reporters that they have “comprehensive policies and procedures in place to ensure prescription safety and errors are a very rare occurrence,” and offered to pay for all the medical expenses the man incurred.

Medication Error Responsible for 65-Year-Old Woman’s Death

December 8, 2014 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month in Bend, Oregon, a 65-year-old woman died as a result of a medication mix-up that occurred at a local hospital. According to a report by one local news source, the woman was admitted to the hospital for a brain surgery a few days prior and came back to the hospital with a dosage question regarding her anti-seizure medication.

Evidently, instead of providing the woman with her anti-seizure medication, the hospital pharmacy provided her with a powerful paralyzing agent that is usually reserved for surgeries. The woman stopped breathing shortly after taking the medication and went into cardiac arrest. The hospital took her off life support a short time later, and she was pronounced dead.

In official statements, the hospital has admitted that the incident was its fault, but it is still conducting an investigation into how exactly the fatal medication mix-up occurred. The woman’s family described their reaction as “pure anger” when they found out that their loved one died as a result of a preventable mistake. At the time of the article’s publication, the family was not sure if they are going to pursue legal action against the hospital.

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.