Tina claims that last December she had her prescription filled at a Dallas Walgreens store, and was surprised to see that the pills had changed. She “thought they must have changed to a generic” and took them anyway—but when she next refilled the prescription, “the pills were back to what I’d taken for years. It ended up taking Walgreens six weeks to get the pill identified.”
We travel full time, so to get our prescription meds we have used Walgreens, because they transfer prescriptions to any of their stores. In Dec of last year I had a prescription filled (for high blood pressure) at a Walgreens store in Dallas…I noticed that the pills looked different, but thought they must have changed to a generic. When I finished that 90 day supply, I got a refill at a Walgreens in Florida. Now the pills were back to what I’d taken for years…an oval green pill. I had 2 left in the old bottle, white round pills…not what that bottle label said they were suppose to be. Acckk! So now I had taken 3 months of the wrong mystery medicine.
I checked the PDR, no matches…I went to the local Walgreens and they couldn’t identify it. Nor could the Poison Control Center. The local Walgreens gave me a phone number for Walgreens Corporate office, which led to another phone number and another, climbing the corporate ladder, finally speaking to the CEOs office (but not the CEO). I couldn’t get anybody to understand that this was serious…that the pills needed to be identified, that it was important to know what I had taken, who else might have gotten the wrong med, how had this happened and more importantly what was being done to assure this wasn’t still happening.
I tried to explain that if this had been a case of product tampering it would have presented like this…a pill not matching the description on the label. That in a case of product tampering people could have died waiting for their corporation to respond.
It ended up taking Walgreens six weeks to get the pill identified. It was a generic allergy pill that was a Wall Mart brand. There was no explanation of how it got in a Walgreens bottle. No explanation about any of this. And no assurances that they have improved any part of their system.
I wanted Walgreens to tell me what had happened… and what they were doing in the future to deal with this sort of mistake. People faced with this situation should immediately be given access to a person or department who will take this seriously. They should not have to wait SIX WEEKS to have a medication identified. And it should not have taken so much persistent effort on my part. Walgreens should have recognized this as an immediate problem, and responded quickly… with concern for my safety and others. They did not and have not done that.
(Photo: Exothermic)
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Not really trying to blame the consumer here, but I do agree that you always need to take some precautions to protect yourself. You should know what your medication should be, and if you’ve been taking a prescription for some time and the pills looked like X and now they look like Y, then that should alert you to a problem.
Mistakes happen. It’s not necessarily negligence or maliciousness. The mistakes shouldn’t happen but they sometimes just happen no matter how careful you are. You shouldn’t be blindly trusting someone, no matter if it’s a doctor, pharmacist, mechanic, or whatever.
Sometimes there’s just giant red flags that should tell you there’s something not right.
With the exception of my Advair(because it is quite impossible to screw that up IMO) I check all my prescriptions now. Even before leaving the doctor’s office I make sure what things look like and what family of pharmaceuticals they are a part of due to a severe allergy to anti-leukotrienes, such as singulair. (Go figure I’m allergic to an allergy medication!)
It is unfortunate the pharmacies mess up, but patients need to take things into their own hands more often. My regular doctor is quite happy that I am more than willing to enlighten myself and understand what the medications I’m taking actually do. I think if more doctors weren’t afraid of their patients having a bit of knowledge on their ailment things might go a little smoother and patients would be a little more inclined to make sure pharmacies get it right.
I’ve been using walgreen’s for years – and they’ve always attached a big sheet of paper that not only has the description/side effects/etc listed on it – it also has a shape of what the pill looks like, the description of the color, dosage (mg).
It hasn’t just been one specific walgreen’s either, so I’m not sure why this walgreen’s didn’t do the printout.
Walgreen’s should’ve been able to identify that substance ASAP, but the OP shouldn’t have taken an odd substance for 90 days. If it was a ‘generic’ version of whatever substance, it would’ve said so on the bottle “xyz…generic for abc”, and all over the attached sheet.
/rant
I think people are getting a little crazy placing all the blame on Walgreens or the OP. Yes, back in the day, you could trust anyone in the white lab coat behind the counter. Of course, there were about 15 prescription options back then. Now… I can think of 4 brands of ED medication off the top of my head and I’m a 25 year old woman.
Walgreens sucks for not caring but MOST COMPANIES DON’T CARE! They just don’t. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your loved ones who may not be capable of caring for themselves. Sure, you can count on the pharmacy or the doctor to do it and if they’re wrong, you can potentially get a nice lawsuit payout but since the human life is irreplaceable, check the damn pills! It is so very worth it. /voice of experience
@MantisDragon: I’m the same way. While I have the Advair, along with two other meds that I get in their original packaging – I do check any other meds, to make sure that I’m not getting something besides what I was prescribed! So far, so good – although I do get kind of edgy when it comes to that sort of thing.
@IFoundIt: Again, forget Walgreens. The fact that Poison Control doesn’t have access to the internet is the real problem here. Why do we let an organization that has so many people’s lives in their hand be so inept, and not care about the public they serve. They take all of these donations and tax payers money, and they don’t care about people. I mean, if I as a lay person can find this, why can’t poison control when they have a “professional” database on their hands.
@IFoundIt: BTW, did it look like this: [www.pharmer.org]
Yes…that’s it. Why couldn’t anybody else find this? I mean any of the Pharmacists, Poison Control Centers or anybody at Walgreens? Late in the 6 weeks wait my daughter found Pharmer.org…but we didn’t notice the drug image section.
I thank you, because this is a great resource. But sheesh, why wasn’t that known to any of these experts?
My point all along is that the folks at Walgreens should have immediately been able to direct me to one person or dept. that had access to this sort of information. They should have this information quickly available for any customer regardless the situation.
@IFoundIt: Again, why are we trouncing on Walgreens when the failure is this supposed health service known as poison control. I entered just 5 things into google here [www.google.com] , and found it right away. They ask for donations, claim to be experts, claim to be supported by hospitals, and the supposed Dr.’s who volunteer there probably got their degree off some cereal box. This “service” needs to be shut down. They make claims like this:
[www.poison.org]
And they can’t even identify a pill I could in searching for two minutes. I think we all need to get together and shut these FRAUDS down. Just b/c I don’t read the bottle, take the wrong meds for 3 months w/no questions asked, don’t ask a single person for assistance, and “seem” alive, doesn’t mean I have to wait a month and a half to find out what I took. They’ll probably say they have “real poisoning cases” to deal w/, but we all know what that means. It’s just a way for some greedy not-for-profit group to shirk their responsibility. Phone calls/requests should be handled by order received, not on some arbitrary triage system where people dying are given top priority. I know, I know, the whiny liberals out there will go “But people may die if you shut it down!” True, but b/c they didn’t identify this pill, how can we trust them?
That being said, I just have one more question. If you got your prescription filled last December(12/1/07,first day in December), took it for three months(last dose on 3/1/08), then you’ve had to wait 6 weeks for an answer(4/14/08), how can you write this story in March? Shouldn’t you STILL be waiting for your answer today? Seems your dates don’t add up. Unless this happened in 2006, which if so, why’d you wait almost a year to bring this up on consumerist?
You are right…again. I started this process with Walgreens thinking I had taken a 30 day supply, then noticed it was a 90 day script…it was filled in Oct of ’07.
I hesitate to admit this since you will see this as another reason to call me a moron. But let me say that taking a medication that looked different was a one time decision, not a new decision made 90 times. It wasn’t the smartest decision I’ve ever made, but as other posters have said, meds do change and I made an assumption. I get it. That was stupid. But I keep trying to come back to my point. This really isn’t about what I did or did not take…the problem is that Walgreens should be able to identify any drug that they dispense. If I had never taken the medication I still would have wanted to know what wrong med they had given me.
And I bring this up now because the final communication I’ve had from Walgreens was a letter saying that they would NOT explain how this happened, or what they will do in the future to identify mystery medications.
As to Poison Control…I was shocked they were no more help than they were. And especially since (as you’ve shown) the information was out there. I don’t think shutting them down is the answer, but really…where are folks suppose to go for this sort of information?
As much as we rely on the internet for so much, in a situation like this it would be better to have an accountable source…like Poison Control.
However, let’s not forget that Poison Control isn’t resposible for the wrong drug (from the wrong store) being dispensed. This really is Walgreens issue.