Errors in local pharmacies

Eight-Year Old Injured After Pharmacy Error and Prescription Misfill

March 22, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a blog from last week, our Maryland Pharmacy Misfill Injury Attorneys discussed a recent case involving a victim of prescription error involving a patient who was given the incorrect dosage of blood thinners and suffered a massive stroke—leading to her wrongful death.

In related news, our lawyers have been following the recent case of an eight-year old boy, who was immediately hospitalized after a pharmacy error resulted in the boy receiving medication that was ten times stronger than his original prescription.

According to an ABC news article, Jessie Jordan, an 8-year old child from Grand Tower, Illinois, was on medication to treat his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The doctor reportedly suggested adding a two-milligram dosage Abilify to his medication list—a drug used to help manage depression and schizophrenia in adults, that the doctor felt could improve his moods.

When the pharmacy filled the prescription for Jordan, they reportedly gave him twenty milligrams of Abilify instead of two—ten times more than the prescribed dosage. Jordan’s father claimed that once he began the medication, he experienced shaking that was uncontrollable, his blood pressure went through the roof, and he experienced delirium. He was taken to the hospital, and according to the news report, the extent of the physical damage and personal injury won’t be known for another month or so, until the child can eliminate from the powerful drug in his body.

Wrongful Death Award Upheld—Walgreens to Pay Family $33 Million in Damages

March 15, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In recent news that our Baltimore, Maryland Pharmacy Error Attorneys have been following, an appeals court has upheld a decision in favor of the family who was awarded $33.3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Deane Hippely, who died in 2007 after a Walgreens Pharmacy technician reportedly made an error in her prescription medication that was treating her breast cancer.

According to the lawsuit, Beth Hippely, a mother of four children from Lakeland, Florida, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, and was given an 88 percent chance of a full recovery. Her recovery treatment plan included chemotherapy, radiation and prescription drugs.

One of the drugs that Hippley was given to treat her breast cancer was a 1 milligram tablet of Warfarin, a blood thinner. When Hippely took her prescription for Warfarin to be filled at the local Walgreens she was mistakenly given 10 milligrams of the drug, by a teenage pharmacy technician who reportedly had little experience.

After a few weeks of taking the wrong dosage of medication, the pharmacy error reportedly caused Hippley to suffer from a stroke, resulting in a brain hemorrhage that caused her personal injury, physical pain and paralysis, forcing her to stop her necessary cancer treatments. She died in January of 2007 before the lawsuit went to trial.

Walmart Pharmacy Misfill—Teenager’s Acne Prescription Wrongly Filled with Viagra

February 17, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In recent news that our Washington D.C. Pharmacy Misfill Attorneys have been following, a young woman in Florida recently experienced a serious medication error when she filled her prescription for doxycycline, a medication for acne, and received a bottle of Viagra instead.

According the news story, after picking up her prescription acne medication at the Walmart pharmacy, she didn’t realize that was mistakenly given Viagra capsules because the capsules were reportedly very similar to the medication she took in both shape, color, and size. She proceeded to take the Viagra without realizing the mistake, and claims to have suffered with health related conditions. It wasn’t until her family discovered the other patient label on the bottom of the bottle underneath her name that clearly indicated that the medication was Viagra, and intended for another patient.

The family of the teenager confronted the pharmacy at Walmart, and claimed that the college student has suffered many physical problems as a result of the pharmacy misfill and medication mistake. She claimed that after taking Viagra, she experienced serious health complications, including a racing heartbeat, extreme bodily temperature changes, anxiety and bouts of dizziness.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 1.3 million people are injured every year in this country from medication errors, with at least one death reported every day. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention, (NCCMERP), reports that injury from medication error is an huge problem and health risk for the public, and needs to receive far more public attention. Medication mistakes can happen anytime in the pharmacy process, from prescribing, distribution, dispensing, administering or monitoring—often times resulting in personal injury.

Jury Orders Rite Aid to Pay $2.5 Million for Pharmacy Misfill

January 28, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

As Maryland Pharmacy Misfill Attorneys, we have been following the recent verdict in which $2.5 million in damages were awarded to a Montgomery, Alabama woman and her husband, who claimed to be victims of a Rite Aid Pharmacy prescription misfill.

According to the lawsuit filed in 2008, Reva Tosh received a prescription for a pain medication on November 11, 2006. When Tosh dropped off the prescription to the Rite Aid pharmacy two days later, the pharmacist misfilled the order with the steroid dexamethasone—a steroid with severe side effects often prescribed during cancer treatments.

Rite Aid Pharmacy allegedly gave Tosh more than seven times the regular dosage of the steroids for a period of 28 days, and she claimed to have developed a disorder of the adrenal glands called Cushing’s Syndrome, that caused her to suffer physical ailments, personal injury, and mental disorders, that confined her to a wheelchair.

During the trial, the the central issue was whether Tosh’s injuries were caused by the pharmacy misfill, or due to her preexisting illness of rheumatoid arthritis.

Reva Tosh was awarded $2 million in damages by the jury, and her husband Gerald Tosh received $500,000 for the his loss of her companionship.

Dangerous Error-Prone Prescription Abbreviations

January 20, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

As Maryland Pharmacy Error Attorneys, we have been following a recent report by The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) about the danger of error-prone abbreviations and when it comes to writing a prescription—the fact that some shortcuts don’t save time, and can result in pharmacy error or injury.

According to the ISMP Error Alert article, nearly everyone in the healthcare industry uses shortcuts, like abbreviations and symbols, in an effort to save time when handwriting specifics for the prescription—including phrases, units of measure and words. Some shortcuts can in the end can be very time consuming, as they need to be checked and verified for accuracy on the receiving end. These verifications could also reportedly cause a greater chance for medication error than if the prescription was written out without abbreviations or symbols. The article claims that it is important to prevent future misunderstandings now, instead of waiting until medical abbreviations, dose designations or symbols lead to a patient injury.

The article lists a few common error-prone abbreviations, symbols and dosage misunderstandings that take more time for the pharmacist to check, and could cause medication mistakes:

• Some abbreviations that indicate the frequency of when to take the drug, can be difficult to understand, and can lead to error. In one prescription for “Penicillin VK 500 mg Q1D X 7D,” the physician accidentally typed “Q1D” (once a day) instead of “QID” (four times a day). The pharmacist realized the mistake, and that the patient was supposed to be taking the penicillin four times a day for seven days (7D). Another example of frequent error comes in the abbreviation for “D” (days), where it can also be mistaken for “doses.”

Local Pharmacy Mistake Kills 21 Polo Horses

December 31, 2009 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a widely publicized pharmacy error from earlier this year that our Maryland Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyers followed, 21 elite horses tragically died after a pharmacy incorrectly prepared the medication given to the horses.

According to reports, 21 of the 25 horses of the Venezuelan polo team were allegedly given an a drug mixed to replicate the name-brand supplement Biodyl—a concoction of vitamins and minerals often used to treat muscle fatigue in horses. Biodyl is reportedly used safely around the world, but hasn’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for this country.

The drug concoction was prepared by Franck’s Pharmacy Compounding Lab in Ocala, and the mixture allegedly contained a strength of an ingredient that was incorrect—making the horses sick and causing their tragic death at the International Polo Club of Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida. Only the horses treated with the medication mistake became sick and died within hours of treatment, after collapsing, as they were unloaded from their trailers where they were scheduled to play in the U.S. Polo Open.

Fox News reported that veterinarians commonly turn to compounding pharmacies for medications that aren’t readily available on pharmacy shelves. The Lechuza polo team said in a statement that a Florida-based veterinarian wrote a prescription for the pharmacy to create a compound similar to Biodyl, after using the manufactured version of the drug for many years without problems.

Steps for Preventing Prescription Errors in Pharmacies

December 29, 2009 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a related blog from yesterday, our Maryland Pharmacy Misfill Lawyers discussed a recent article from USA Today, where the step-by-step process of how a prescription is filled was followed in two pharmacies—to uncover how pharmacy mistakes are taking place, and how to prevent them in the future.

The article revealed how the possible errors are made and also discussed what steps pharmacies are making to try and prevent these errors, and reduce the number of pharmacy mistakes and patient injuries that could happen in the future.

Pharmacies are trying to prevent errors by:

• Encouraging improved communications between doctors and pharmacies.

• Encouraging doctors to write the prescriptions in full length, instead of using medical codes or abbreviations.

• Trying to transition from prescriptions that are handwritten to electronic prescribing—where a doctor sends the prescription directly from the doctors’ offices to the pharmacy computers.

• Computers are being used to aid the prescribing process, with more alerts for drug interactions, allergies, or patient’s illnesses.

• Other computer safety features include popup boxes when a technician enters or confuses a drug name with similarly named drug. After the popup appears, the technician has to initial the box to show he checked the drug.

Understanding the Prescription Drug’s Path through a Pharmacy can Reduce Error

December 28, 2009 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a recent study that our Maryland Pharmacy Error Attorneys have been following, USA Today investigated every step of a prescription’s path in a pharmacy—to uncover the potential for medication mistakes with each step of the filling process, that can lead to patient injury or wrongful death.

In the research, USA Today interviewed pharmacy experts and toured two pharmacies, a CVS and Walgreens, to study the six steps of the prescription filling process, and the potential errors that can happen along the way, as well as real cases that have caused actual injuries or death.

Step 1: Prescription received

When the customer drops off the prescription to the technician, or the doctor’s office calls in the prescription, errors can occur if a technician misunderstands a doctor’s handwriting, prescription codes and abbreviations or misunderstands the oral instructions over the phone. In one case, a doctor’s prescription for methadone read “sig 4 tablet BID for chronic pain,” which means “Please label (sig) this drug to say: take 4 tablets twice per day (BID) for chronic pain. The technician typed, “Take 4 tables by mouth as needed for chronic pain.” The patient allegedly died of an overdose of methadone.

Step 2: Prescription entry
A technician then scans the original prescription into the computer and manually enters the patient’s personal data, like name, address, date of birth and phone number, as well as drug information, strength, dosage instructions and quantity. If a technician incorrectly types the prescribed drug dosage, formulation or the patient’s medical condition, history or allergies into the computer, then serious errors can occur, including personal injury. Also if the wrong drug code is chosen in the computer system, it can be mistaken for a similarly named drug. In one instance, a pharmacy was asked to fill a prescription for compazine, an anti-nausea drug, (COM) and accidentally gave the patient a generic substitute for coumadin, a blood thinner (COU).

Pharmacy Mistake Leads to Wrongful Death—Rite Aid Faces Lawsuit

December 22, 2009 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Our Maryland Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyers have been following the recent case filed last week on behalf of John Sheridan, a man who died after being prescribed the wrong dosage of a cancer medication.

According to the suit, Sheridan was prescribed Temodar, a powerful drug for brain tumors that was part of his treatment of cancer in September 2007. The prescription was allegedly written incorrectly, and Sheridan was wrongly prescribed 10 times the correct dosage—he reportedly took the medicine daily when it was only to be used every other week. Rite Aid Pharmacy allegedly dispensed the drug to Sheridan, without checking with Sheridan’s oncologist for a second opinion to clarify the prescription mistake.

The lawsuit accuses a Rite Aid pharmacy for contributing in the wrongful death of Sheridan, who reportedly had consumed toxic doses of the cancer medication. According to the Associated Press, the doctor who wrote the incorrect prescription has settled with Sheridan’s estate.

According to a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine, at least 1.5 million Americans are injured by medication mistakes every year, and nearly 7,000 people die every year from medication errors annually.

QJM: How to Prevent Medication Errors and Injury with Balanced Prescribing

November 30, 2009 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

As Maryland Medication Mistake Attorneys we have recently read an article published in the QJM, the long-established leading general medical journal, on the topic of medication errors—giving an overview of what medication mistakes are, how they happen, and how to prevent them from happening in the future.

According to the article, published in August 2009, a medication error is a failure in the process of treatment that can lead to the harming or personal injury of a patient. Medication errors can often occur in:

• Prescribing faults: ineffective prescribing, irrational or inappropriate prescribing, under-prescribing and over-prescribing when deciding which treatment and dosage plan to take.

• Prescription writing: illegibility
• Formulation manufacturing: incorrect strength, misleading packaging
• Drug formulation dispensing: incorrect drug, formulation and label
• Administering the medicine: incorrect dosage, wrong directions for frequency, invalid duration of treatment
• Monitoring drug therapy treatment and drug treatment alteration when required

Medication errors can be classified, according to the article, by the use of psychological error classifications—knowledge-errors, rule-errors, action-errors, and memory-based errors. It is important to detect the medication mistakes, that can range from trivial to serious, and to create a working environment that is free of blame, and encourages the reporting of errors.

The article also recommends, “balanced prescribing” to avoid medication errors. In balanced prescribing, the mechanism of action of the drug should complement the pathophysiology of the disease—optimizing the balance of benefit to harm.