Pharmacy Error Injury Lawyer Blog

Decreasing Errors Involving Look-Alike Sound-Alike Drugs

August 21, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

While there are many causes of Maryland pharmacy errors, one of the most frequently reported errors involves a patient receiving the wrong medication from their pharmacist. In many cases, the pharmacist provides a patient with a drug that has a name similar to the drug which they were prescribed.

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has coined the term look-alike sound-alike (LASA) drug to describe a medication that is either spelled or pronounced similar to other medications. It is estimated that up to 35% of all medication errors involve LASA medications. The IMSP has also published a list of the most common LASA drugs.

For example, common LASA drugs include:

hydromorphone and morphine
vinblastine and vincristine
tramadol and trazodone

Dosing Mistakes: A Common Type of Pharmacy Error That Is Difficult to Catch

August 14, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

When most people hear that a pharmacy error has been made, they picture a busy pharmacist who provided one patient with another’s medication after transposing a few letters in a patient’s last name. And with thousands of medications in the average pharmacy, there certainly are a significant number of Maryland pharmacy errors involving a pharmacist providing a patient with the wrong medication altogether. However, this is only one type of pharmacy error.Many pharmacy errors involve a patient receiving the correct medication, but the wrong dosage. This can either occur when a pharmacist provides the patient with the wrong strength of medication or when the instructions provided to the patient are incorrect. In either event, a patient can suffer serious injuries by taking too much (or too little) of a prescribed medication. Children are especially susceptible to this type of error, since medication tends to affect them more, given their size and weight.

Parents are encouraged to double-check their children’s prescriptions for any errors at the pharmacy. In addition, parents should consult with pharmacy staff, letting them know that the medication is for a child.

Court Dismisses Claim Against Drug Manufacturer for Failure to Provide Medication Guide with Prescription

August 7, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Plaintiffs have to be careful when it comes to filing a Maryland pharmacy error claim. A recent case shows how asserting the wrong claim in a case can result in the case’s dismissal.

In that case, the plaintiff brought a claim against a drug manufacturer for allegedly causing her husband’s death due to the manufacturer’s failure to provide a medication guide with her husband’s prescription. The manufacturer made a generic form of amiodarone hydrochloride, a drug used for certain life-threatening heartbeat irregularities. As a generic drug, it is required to have the same labeling as its approved brand-name counterpart. One of the labeling requirements is making medication guides available for distribution to each patient who is prescribed the drug. The medication guides explain the approved uses of the drug and also explain the drug’s side effects “in nontechnical, understandable language.” In amiodarone’s medication guide, it states that the drug should be used only to treat “life-threatening heartbeat problems.”The plaintiff’s husband died after taking amiodarone to treat his non-life threatening atrial fibrillation. The plaintiff alleged that her husband died because he had been taking amiodarone, which he had been prescribed. The manufacturer allegedly failed to provide the medication guide for distribution, which her husband did not receive when he filled his prescriptions in May and June 2015. The plaintiff claimed that her husband was not aware that only those with life-threatening heartbeat irregularities should take the drug, due to its serious side effects. She argued that the manufacturer failed to warn her husband by failing to provide the medication guide, as required under federal law.

Pharmacy Required to Inform Physician When a Prescription Requires Pre-Authorization

July 23, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Recently, a state appellate court issued a very interesting and important opinion in a pharmacy error case discussing a pharmacist’s duty to inform a prescribing physician when a patient attempts to fill a prescription that required pre-authorization from the patient’s insurance company. Ultimately, the court held that pharmacies have a limited duty to notify both the patient as well as the prescribing physician each time a patient attempts to fill a prescription requiring pre-authorization.

The Facts of the Case

When the plaintiff was 18 years old, she suffered her first seizure. She was taken to the hospital and given a dose of Topamax, an antiepileptic medication. After discharge, the plaintiff saw a neurologist who recommended she continue taking Topamax and wrote her a prescription.

The plaintiff filled the prescription without incident until her 19th birthday. However, when she went to fill the prescription after turning 19, the pharmacist informed her that her insurance company required pre-authorization for Topamax prescriptions for patients over 18 years of age. The pharmacist told the plaintiff that they would follow up with her physician in order to obtain the required pre-authorization. Although not required to do so by law, the pharmacy routinely sent a fax to prescribing physicians offices when a patient tried to fill a medication that required a pre-authorization.

Steps That All Pharmacists Can Take to Reduce Dispensing Errors

July 16, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Pharmacists are highly trained medical professionals, much like doctors or nurses. And under the United States’ medical system, pharmacists have a very important role to play in providing medical care to patients. Indeed, patients not only rely on pharmacists to be accurate, but also to be diligent in looking out for potential adverse drug interactions that a physician may have missed.

Like other medical professionals, pharmacists have a duty to those whom they serve. While the nuances of a pharmacist’s duty to her patients is exceedingly complex; at its most basic level it requires pharmacists to accurately fill all patient prescriptions and provide meaningful medication consultations when requested or required. However, each year there are thousands of medication errors, many of which result in serious harm to the patient.

The duty pharmacists owe to their patients evolves over time as scientific research uncovers new best practices and technology developments allow for more accurate record-keeping and prescription dispensing. According to a recent industry news source, all pharmacists should be taking the following steps to avoid making preventable errors:

Drug Used to Combat Opioid Overdoses Recalled

July 9, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced a voluntary recall of several lots of an increasingly popular drug that is designed to combat the effect of an opioid overdose. According to a recent news report discussing the voluntary recall, two specific lots of the drug Naloxone have been recalled based on the “potential presence of embedded and loose particulate matter on the syringe plunger.”

Hospira, the company that manufactures the drug, moved forward with the recall after it discovered that users may experience certain side effects if they inject the affected medication. These side effects include local irritation, an allergic reaction, inflammation of a vein, restriction of blood supply to healthy tissue, pulmonary embolism, and pulmonary infarction.

The FDA explains that users should be sure to check the medication before injecting it. Specifically, users should look for discoloration or particulate matter. The drug’s manufacturer explained that the recalled medication was provided to medical professionals and law enforcement. The company has stressed that none of the recalled lots were distributed to individual patients.

Study Notes an Increase in Accidental Overdoses from Cancer Drug

July 2, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Medical errors are all too common in hospitals throughout the country. In any Maryland medical error case, a plaintiff must show that the defendant was negligent in acting or failing to act in some way. There are four elements a plaintiff must prove in order to be successful in a medical negligence claim: a legal duty, a failure to perform that duty, causation, and damages.

Medical errors cases can be hard to prove in some cases because a plaintiff must show that the defendant’s actions or failure to act were the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. This can be tricky, especially in medical error cases, because patients are often already sick and proving causation is not always clear-cut. Additionally, the issues involved in the case are often complex and involve scientific principles beyond the understanding of most people. For that reason, such cases often rely on the testimony of experts.

In some cases, an expert is needed simply to understand whether mistakes were made and who may be at fault. As one example, a recent study revealed the problem of accidental overdoses from a drug that has been used on cancer patients for many years.

Institute for Safe Medication Practices Discusses Common Pharmacy Errors in Recent Presentation

June 22, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Each year, it is estimated that there are approximately 700,000 medication errors resulting in over 100,000 patient hospitalizations. The pharmacy industry realizes that this is a major problem, and for decades has been taking steps to reduce the rate of prescription errors among retail and hospital pharmacists. Most recently, a representative from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) gave a lecture discussing common types of pharmacy errors and what pharmacists can and should do to guard against them.

Medication errors occur due to a breakdown somewhere along the line; from when a physician writes a prescription to when the pharmacist provides it to the patient. According to a recent industry news report detailing the speaker’s comments, she claimed that pharmacy errors occur throughout various points in the process, and pharmacists should take precautions every step of the way.

The ISMP representative discussed that there are several situations in which an error was more likely to occur. For example, when a pharmacist is dealing with drug shortages, vaccines, improperly or unlabeled medication, and insufficient drug allergy alerts, the rate of error was highest. The pharmacist detailed three of the most alarming prescription errors that she was made aware of over the past year, including:

A patient who was prescribed 25 mg of hydralazine rather than the prescribed medication, hydroxyzine;
A child-patient who developed Parkinson-like symptoms after being provided with an improperly diluted dose of risperidone; and
An elderly Alzheimer’s patient who was given both a 5mg and 10 mg dose of donepezil at the same time rather than the prescribed 5mg dose for four weeks to be followed by the 10mg dose afterward.

Children Are Especially at Risk of Serious Injury or Death Following a Maryland Pharmacy Error

June 15, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

While a Maryland pharmacy error can result in serious and even fatal consequences for any patient, the very young are at an especially high risk. This is a frightening thought, considering that pharmacy errors are much more common than most people believe. Indeed, it is estimated that there are over 63,000 medication errors involving child patients each year. This amounts to one error approximately every eight minutes.

Researchers have noted that the most common type of medication error involving a child patient is when the prescribed medication is an analgesic or a cold/cough syrup. Commonly, these medications result in the pharmacist providing patients with a double-dose of the prescribed medication. That being said, it is not unheard of for a pharmacist to give a parent the wrong medication altogether.

When a pharmacist error results in patient harm, the injured patient may be able to pursue a claim for compensation through a Maryland pharmacy error lawsuit. While proving that an error was made is not necessarily difficult in many cases, establishing that the error resulted in a patient’s injuries can be challenging. For this reason, many pharmacy error cases require expert testimony to help prove causation.

CDC Discovers Shingles Vaccine Is Prone to Administration Error

June 8, 2018 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Shingles is a viral disease characterized by a skin rash consisting of painful blisters that usually appear in a strip across a person’s face or body. While the symptoms of Shingles will usually go away within a few weeks, some experience nerve pain that can last years.

The disease is caused by a reactivation of the varicella zoster virus (VZV), the initial exposure of which causes chicken pox. The reason why the VZV virus reactivates is not widely understood by the medical community, although it is understood to occur more in the elderly and those with a compromised immune system.

There have been several vaccines created to prevent Shingles. As of 2017, a new vaccine called Shingrix was approved for patients over 50 years of age and can prevent most cases of Shingles. Once Shingrix was approved for use, it later became the preferred vaccine according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Unfortunately, it has been involved in Maryland pharmacy errors and errors in other states.