Wrongful Death

E-prescribing Usage Increases with Doctors, but Not Without Problems

August 2, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

As our Washington D.C. Pharmacy Error Injury Attorneys reported in a recent blog, physicians who are not prescribing medications electronically, or e-prescribing, by 2012 will be financially penalized by the federal government.

Although the use of electronic prescribing has increased in years, and evidence shows that e-prescribing can reduce pharmacy misfills that can lead to patient injury or even wrongful death, many local doctors reportedly clam that overall acceptance of this important technology is lagging.

According to a study published last week by the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Studying Health System Change, less than one-third of this country’s physicians in office settings, are e-prescribing. The study also revealed that even fewer physicians that were e-prescribing were using the beneficial aspects of the system, like searching for serious drug interactions and using the system to cross reference patient insurance for prescription drug verifications to ensure health plan payment coverage. The study also found that even fewer doctors who used the electronic system would actually prescribe medications electronically, opting to use the fax machine instead for prescription submittal.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) claims 1.5 million people in this country are injured by preventable medication errors, with nearly 7,000 deaths every year.

Woman Sues Walgreens for Seizure Medication Pharmacy Error

July 14, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

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.

Drug Alert Warns Epinephrine Syringe Shortage Could Lead to Dosing Error Risks

June 30, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In yesterday’s blog, our medication error attorneys discussed a recent accidental overdose of epinephrine that led to a man’s death in a hospital. According to the FDA, Epinephrine is a high alert medication that could cause significant patient harm or injury when used in error. Medication error can occur when there is confusion in regard to epinephrine product ratio strengths. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices, ISMP, has received a number of fatality reports due to miscalculations of strengths of epinephrine injections.

In similar epinephrine news, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), announced a National Alert Network (NAN) message this month, to warn healthcare providers about dangerous medication mistakes that could be caused by a shortage of pre-filled epinephrine syringes.

The NAN warning states that emergency syringes of epinephrine in 1mg/10mL (0.1 mg/ml) are currently on backorder from the Hospira Inc., the only manufacturer of the product after the pharmaceutical company Amphastar stopped making its emergency syringes of the drug in 2009.

According to ASHP’s director of medication use, quality and improvement, Bona Benjamin, Epinephrine is a life saving drug used in ambulances, hospitals and any other emergency settings when a patient’s heart has stopped.

Benjamin claimed that the shortage of epinephrine does not effect quantities of the EpiPen, the epinephrine injection products that are self administered in .3 mg and .15 mg doses, to remedy severe emergency reactions to food, medication, insect bites, and other reactions of an allergic nature.

Man Dies After Receiving Overdose of Drug in Hospital

June 29, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Our Maryland Medication Error Attorneys have been reading about the tragic incident that happen in Maine recently, after a local man went to the emergency room with symptoms of anaphylaxis, and was given an overdose of the drug epinephrine—causing his wrongful death.

After suffering an allergic reaction from eating seafood that included facial swelling and thickening of the tongue, Timothy Harvey, 51, went to the Mayo Regional Hospital emergency room for treatment. Harvey was reportedly given 0.3 milligrams of epinephrine, and reportedly showed good signs of improvement.

While Harvey was being observed by the hospital staff, he had another allergic attack, with some of the earlier symptoms. The staff reportedly gave him another dose of epinephrine, but accidentally administered an incorrect dosage of the drug, causing a medication error that was ten times the normal dose, 3 milligrams instead of 0.3 milligrams.

According to the FDA, Epinephrine is a high alert medication that could cause significant harm or patient injury when used in error. When Harvey started to experience chest pain and shortness of breath, the medical team discovered the mistake, and immediately contacted the poison control center to attempt to reverse the effects of the drug, but with no success. The Epinephrine overdose ultimately killed Harvey, despite the hospital staff’s many attempts to save his life.

Medication Mistake Causes Accident Death and Takes Toddler’s Life

June 18, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Recently our attorneys at Lebowitz and Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers discussed the topic of medication mistakes with children in a blog, after actor Dennis Quaid filed another lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare Corporation, after his twins were given a near fatal dose of medication in the hospital.

Sadly, in another children’s medication mistake incident that our attorneys have been following, a 19-month child in Omaha recently died after being given medication in a hospital that was improperly administered into her body.

The child, Alicia Coleman, was born twelve weeks premature, and battled a gastrointestinal disorder, but had been a fighter from the start according to her mother, Dominique Coleman, and was reportedly getting stronger with improved health. Coleman claimed that doctors had even recently claimed that her daughter’s medications would soon be cut in half, as the child was just starting to walk and talk.

Coleman claims that after dropping her daughter off at Children’s Home Healthcare’s World, where Alicia was due to receive medication, a nurse mistakenly made a medication error while giving the child a drug that was supposed to slow the absorption of food in her system. Instead of putting the drug into Alicia’s feeding tube, the drug was reportedly put into a tube that was the central line to the child’s heart, causing a seizure and cardiac arrest.

Family Sues UPMC Hospital for Medication Mistake that Led to Wrongful Death

June 10, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

As medication mistake attorneys in Baltimore, Maryland, we have been following a recent lawsuit filed by the family of an 82-year old patient, who died last year after a medical mistake was made in the recording of her medical history—that led to her receiving a medication dosage that was seven times the strength of her original prescription.

Eileen Funston was reportedly admitted to UPMC Passavant Hospital, in Pittsburg, PA in October of last year, where her medication history was reportedly recorded incorrectly by the doctor.

Funston’s dosage of methotrexate, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, was reportedly recorded as 12.5 milligrams per day, which should have been 12.5 milligrams per week. The medication error in her medical records was reportedly not detected, and was then repeated in her records when she was moved to another care center.

Funston’s family claims that the medication mistake lead to an overdose of methotrexate, causing Funston to suffer internal bleeding, that cause her to aspirate blood. She was reportedly moved back to UPMC Passavant hospital, where she died.

Baltimore, Maryland Pharmacist Sentenced for Selling Illegal Prescription Drugs to Dealer

April 23, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In recent Baltimore, Maryland Pharmacy Error news, a local pharmacist in Reisterstown was reportedly sentenced to six years in federal prison for illegally selling 34,000 prescription drug painkillers to a drug dealer.

Maryland’s U.S. Attorney’s office announced this month that Ketankumar Arvind Patel, a former pharmacist for the Medicine Shoppe pharmacy, was working with a drug dealer to sell drugs containing the opioid oxycodone, like OxyContin and Percocet. Patel reportedly showed the drug dealer how to write fake prescriptions with a blank prescription pad to avoid detection from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), other authorities, and insurance companies.

The drug dealer went on to fill out multiple fake prescriptions in different patient names for both prescription painkillers, and Patel filled them in his pharmacy from July 2007 to March 2009. The Department of Justice claims that Patel sold around 620 prescriptions for the dealer, at around $8-$12 per 80mg pill of the drug OxyContin, and around $2-$10 per 10mg pill of the drug Percocet.

According to U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosensten, prescription medication abuse is one of the leading law enforcement challenges, with drugs that are meant to be used under the supervision of a doctor, sold to substance abusers who become addicted to the drugs, which has become increasingly prevalent among young adults and teenagers, and can lead to personal injury or even wrongful death.

Pharmacy Error in English-Spanish translated Drug Labels and Instructions

April 19, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In a recent study that our Maryland Pharmacy Misfill Attorneys have been following, the problem of prescription translations from English to Spanish in pharmacies nationwide is being exposed, as well as the potential for medication error with customers.

The study, published in the May issue of Pediatrics, shows that many Spanish speaking people living in the United States are receiving prescription drugs from pharmacies with labels and instructions that have been translated so poorly from English to Spanish, that they are riddled with errors, misspellings, and incorrect phrasing. The prescription medications in these cases proved to have the potential of being more of a health hazard than a health benefit to patients if incorrectly administered—which could lead to personal injury or wrongful death.

According to the study results, the prescription translation errors are occurring because of poor translation systems in the computer programs that most pharmacies depend on for Spanish to English medication translations.

The study focused on 286 pharmacies in the Bronx, New York, where a reported 44 percent of the city’s population speak Spanish. The results found that 86 percent of pharmacies provided Spanish labels and instructions that were translated by computer programs, 11 percent used staff members for translations, and 3 percent of pharmacies used a professional interpreter to translate the labels and instructions.

The researchers reportedly found dozens of incidents where the quality of the medication label and instruction translations were dangerouly inconsistent. A common problem was that the computer program translated the prescription information into “Spanglish”— a mix of English and Spanish that was hard to read and often confusing. One example of a medication translation mistake was the use of the word “once” in English, meaning “once a day” that also means “eleven” in Spanish, which could result in a possible overdose. Other instructions that were not properly translated included phrases like, “apply topically,” or take “with juice,” or “with food,” as well as the length of the drug course, like “for seven days.”

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.

Hospitals Fined by CDPH for Alleged Medication Mistakes

February 1, 2010 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

In recent article that our Maryland-based Medical Mistake Attorneys have been following, The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has fined 13 hospitals in California $650,000 for 16 medical mistakes that have caused serious patient injury, harm, or even wrongful death in 2008 and 2009.

In one hospital pharmacy error in Oakland, California, a 90-year old emergency room patient at Kaiser Foundation Hospital, received a variety of blood pressure and stomach ulcer medications that were meant for another patient. The emergency room staff did not double check the medication orders sent from the pharmacy, and the patient went into severe respiratory distress after receiving the potassium chloride by mistake.

A rapid response team was sent in and the patient was reportedly breathing four to six breaths per minute with a fluctuating blood pressure. The man was intubated and put on a ventilator for breathing. Further testing proved that the patient lost brain function from the medication error. A physician interviewed by the California Health investigators claimed that he could not rule out the possibility that the medication mistake caused a severe change in the patient’s health.

In another case, at California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, a patient was incorrectly given the drug Methotrexate, or chemotherapy, as a treatment for ectopic pregnancy—even though the patient was not in fact pregnant. Over the following week, the patient reportedly developed immune suppression, renal function decline, severe leukopenia and neutropenia, and oral, skin and esophageal ulcerations due to the medication error. The investigators reported that using chemotherapeutic medication on a patient who was not pregnant subjected the patient to serious health complications, physical harm, and injury.