CVS Accidentally Gives You Leukemia Drugs, Sends You To Intensive Care For A Week
You should always check to make sure the medicines you get are the medicines you're prescribed. Dorothy Enriquez learned this lesson the hard way when she began taking the leukemia drugs that CVS gave her instead of her actual prescription. Not only did the pharmacy give her the wrong drug, but at several times the recommended dose for someone who actually has leukemia.
She took the drugs because she thought she'd been given a generic for her normal prescription, but when she started feeling ill, she called CVS and asked them about the strange new drug. They told her it wasn't a generic for her usual prescription, but they did offer to refill it for her. Finally, Dorothy looked up the drug on the internet. That's when she found out it was a powerful chemotherapy drug.
Ms. Enriquez ended up in the hospital, and CVS ended up in Fox 5, New York's "Hall of Shame." Fox 5 went to the CVS with their camera crew and tried to interview the pharmacist who made the mistake. He wasn't willing to talk, but they did notice that he was supervising more assistants than is allowed by law. When they asked him about the violation he smiled and answered, "You're good!"
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Comments:
Mercaptopurine's a hell of a drug.
And to top it all off, CVS now owns Caremark!
"You're good!" :)
You're fired! :)
That is messed up! I'm not really sure what else to say other than that's horrible.
Seriously people, you pay money to get your drugs AND talk to the pharmacist. If ANYTHING is different, ask. Talk to the Pharmacist. Not the flunky, the Pharmacist. If he doesn't have time, refuse the prescription, call HQ, send Ben an email, and he will then make time.
Remember, the people giving you drugs are just that, people. They make mistakes, have lives/troubles of their own, maybe were confused. There are many things in place to make sure you get the right drugs. If you wouldn't pick a strange pill off the street and pop it in your mouth, don't do it when a guy in a white jacket gives it to you. It's your health.
WOW.
Everybody (especially if you have kids) should have a copy of the big giant pill/drug book. It's the one where you look up the drug and it has pictures of them and tells you the color and what should appear on the front and back of every pill, for every dosage, name-brand and generic.
You can find it at any bookstore for like $10. When you get a new drug, CHECK IT AGAINST THE BOOK. And if you're too lazy to do it for you (which I totally am), check your KIDS' drugs against the book, because kids' systems can't handle what ours can!
@AlteredBeast: They're supposed to tell you if your drug is going to look different than usual. So that this doesn't happen.
I don't want to blame her, but I wouldn't take my vitamin if it all of a sudden looked different and there was nothing on the bottle telling me why.
That CVS and pharmacist should burn for this though. Big mistake.
@Git Em SteveDave: ...although there tends (maybe erroneously) to be a level of confidence that you're receiving the correct drug.
I mean, it is their FRICKING JOB. Being human and having a life is NOT an excuse to do your job poorly, to the point of potentially killing someone.
Can't wait for the PR response. I'm sure they'll be "taking it seriously".
@Eyebrows McGee: you could also use this:
"Worried about those capsules you found in your teenager's room? Not sure about some of those leftover pills still in the bathroom cabinet? There's a good chance that our Pill Identification Wizard can help you match size, shape, colour... then lead you to the detailed description in our drugs database."
@Eyebrows McGee: This wouldn't have helped. The drug WAS the one which was in the bottle, so all the description would have matched. I wonder why she didn't read the insert, which describes in horrific detail what the stuff is. I keep my inserts, and never throw them out. I could understand if the label was correct, and the pills were wrong, but in this case, the pills and the bottle matched, but not the prescription.
@Lo-Pan: I agree. Especially if the name changed also. But I again wonder why she didn't read the insert at least. Even if she didn't ask the Pharmacist, she should have sat down and read the insert. Would have helped her more than the internet.
@MPHinPgh: I understand that, but while not an excuse, it IS a cause of mistakes. I am in no way excusing whomever filled the prescription. But realize that they are just as fallable as you are. If you were supposed to trust them, or if they never made mistakes, there wouldn't be the multi-tiered system in place that there is. In this case, the mistake was made in reading/entering in the prescription. Since the wrong drug was entered, all the safeguards on the pharmacy side worked as they were supposed to(showing the correct pill, describing it), but it didn't help. BUT, one part is the insert they give you which describes the drug, and what it is used for. This should have alerted the patient, if it was read. Since the insert matched the drug, if it was read, it would have told the patient that this was a chemo drug, not one used to treat Thyroid problems. Like I said before, if you wouldn't take a strange pill off the street and eat it, don't take a strange pill from a pharmacist.
LAW-SUIT!!!!
At least for hospital bills, time/wages lost, possible damage to health, punishment for screwing up SO BADLY & some extra just for the hell of it!
Rite Aid seemed to take some action by making sure the pill bottle had an accurate description of its intended contents. If somebody put in the wrong drug, I bet it wouldn't cover that instance.
Several Walgreens and Duane Reades seem to have The Pill Book on the pharmacists counter as you're paying for the prescription.
@Git Em SteveDave: Big difference. You wouldn't expect a pill on the street to be something you are supposed to take.
CVS is at fault.
Get that through your heads. They screwed up, almost causing a fatality.
CVS is at fault.
The woman who recieved the drug took it in good faith. Let us all repeat here:
CVS is at fault.
Stop blaming the OP.
While our access to information is at an all-time high, it's still critical that pharmacists and pharmacy workers use all due care in filling prescriptions. If they can't be careful enough to fill prescriptions with the right drugs, they shouldn't be working in a pharmacy, period. People make mistakes, but some aren't be entitled to them - doctors and pharmacists are some of those people.
If only young George Bailey had been there to stop Mr. Gower from filling that prescription!
On a serious note, as someone going through chemotherapy on purpose, I wouldn't wish those drugs on my worst enemy. I hope that woman becomes a millionaire.
@Git Em SteveDave: To an extent, I guess I can agree, but for the majority of people (in my estimation, at least), the questioning generally stops at the time the prescription is written. I think most people will ask their doctor what the med is for, but once the pharmacy hands over the bottle of pills, the only real question is "how often do I have to take them?" I think most people have an expectation that they were given what the doctor ordered.
Maybe that expectation is no longer valid now that big companies like CVS, etc hire pharmacists as though they were factory workers. It's no longer really a profession, now it's more "just a job"
I dunno...I've never looked at the pills and questioned if they were the right drug. I probably will now.
Pharmacists are paid a lot of money. I remember in 1995 one of my highschool friends made 86k a year after 2 years of college in rural New York.
They are paid to ensure that they properly dispense the proper drug in the correct dosage. If something looks weird like the doctor has crap hand writing the pharmacist is supposed to check out, the same as if you are giving a patient a chemotherapy drug that you haven't seen them take before.
That guy is PERSONALLY liable in this case, unless the law has changed in the last 15 years.
I'm fairly sure CVS wanted to hire more pharmacists and the one on duty said "No thanks, I enjoy making less than most pharmacists and working 60 hours a week in a terribly under-staffed pharmacy." Come on people! CVS does a TON of prescriptions and yet management continues to try to cut costs by reducing hours available for people to work. Sure the pharmacist made a mistake, it's going to happen. Yes it sucks when it happens. I'm not saying he should be upbeat about it and I doubt he is. His remark "You're good!" was probably the best way he could respond to a "NO SHIT I'M OVER-WORKED" comment from a FOX news crew. The CVS I work at has 1 pharmacist (at a time, 1 hour overlap at shift change) and 4-5 techs for a 700 script store. It's pretty f***ing insane. Our pharmacists do an amazing job keeping up. Toss in the drive-thru and the most annoying phone-call notification system ever invented (except maybe electrocution), it's not only busy and under-staffed, it's also just a stressful place to work.
Now I know I'm just making excuses for CVS... it really sucks this kind of thing happened and I don't wish it on anyone. Mistakes are made all the time, it's just not usually something that ends up with a person in the hospital. So many drugs have nearly identical names, some have identical bottles - literally identical except for drug name. Generic drugs are the worst offenders since the companies do not try to make unique packaging for each drug - they just use the same bottle for every drug. Then you have the technicians (that's me) who have NO TRAINING before we get put to work filling prescriptions. We spend a few days going over customer service, inventory and the computer system but nothing about drugs. Step outside the pharmacy to the doctors and RN's who are also insanely busy - they write crazy prescriptions all the time. Drugs that don't exist anymore or never did, strengths that don't exist, directions that make no sense (like tablets being put in the eye, or apply a suppository topically). Add in illegible handwriting (still pretty common even with computer printed scripts) and missing information (I'm still surprised when a doc forgets to sign, or put a DEA# on a controlled script) and you still only have half the problems that can happen. The other half is insurance which is its own nightmare world... Anyone who has ever heard the words "Prior Authorization" knows what I mean.
Ok... now I'm ranting. Long story short, I'm very sorry to hear that this happened and I wish it hadn't. But with the complex medical system that we have right now mistakes WILL happen. You can blame the pharmacist or the technician but generally all pharmacies are very busy. Patients (not customers, mind you) need to ask questions about their drugs. Call your pharmacist to ask about interactions, also call if a pill looks different than before. When you get a script from your doc, make them write it for a brand name (the pharmacy can still fill for a generic if the doc signs on the right line) so you can recognize and pronounce the drug name - it's easier to ask for your refill of Zyrtec than to ask for Cetirizine and you'll get the same thing (btw, this is now OTC! In both brand and generic). The easiest method is to just ask at pickup what medications you are getting. If it's a new drug they should ask if you have any questions. The doctor can even write the prescription to include what it is for on the label. So if you take Concerta twice a day, it would say "Take 1 tablet twice a day for ADD" instead of just "Take 1 tablet twice a day".
A little side note - if you have a drug and don't know what it is - you can call your local pharmacy and they can usually identify it for you. If they can't (some don't have the software) then you can call your poison control center to have it identified.
K, that's all for now.
@maxforrest32: So if a pharmacist gave her a gun, and told her to shoot herself, she should just do it? I SAID the Pharmacist(The C in CVS doesn't stand for Chung, so I'm guessing he isn't the WHOLE company) made a mistake. BUT, they don't give out all of those inserts for fun. They are meant to be read. They also make you sign a form saying you understand all about your drug. Perhaps the Pharmacist held a bottle of pills to her temple and made her sign it? She admitted noticing a difference, but didn't bother to ask. The patient MUST bear some responsibility in cases like this. There are cases when they don't. Those are cases where the pills have been tampered with. In those cases, ALL the safeguards wouldn't help.
@tedyc03: It's not a matter of entitlement. People just make mistakes, no matter how careful they are or how serious the repercussions of the mistake may be. Yes, CVS is at fault because their employee screwed up. CVS should be liable for some kind of recompense to the victim. And, I have to say, if I made a mistake like this and Fox 5 showed up with a camera crew at my work place I might not respond any better than the pharmacist did.
CVS made a mistake and blame lies with them, however blame also lies with the customer. If my pills changed I would be asking why before leaving the store. Always read the insert it's there for a reason
Definitely agree that the PHARMACIST was at fault, not CVS. Now if it happens again soon at a CVS or improper conditions are found, then yeah, start blaming the firm.
Until then, it is a personal error, not a corporate one and the individual should be punished.
I am friends with most of the pharmacists at my CVS. After I drop off a prescription, there is a a good chance I will get the "hey John, I put the generic in for you because it's cheaper." Because that's what I always do. I trust them. Doesn't change the fact that I always check my prescriptions, and look up all new drugs I am given. Mostly because I don't trust my doctor (who can't even remember what I am allergic to.) I feel the blame here is mutual. Everyone screwed up pretty bad, and it just happened to be a major screw up.
@MPHinPgh: I stop reading my inserts after I get my first prescription from my Dr., get it filled, talk to the pharma, and confirm it's the right drug. After that though, yes, I stop reading them as long as nothing changes. I have read what the drug is for, note if it matches what I am be treated for. I have asked my Dr. and my Pharmacist if it will interact w/anything else I take. BUT if my pill changes, you can bet I will be re-reading and asking questions. Drugs are nothing to mess with. There is a reason certain ones are handed out by Dr's orders. Those are powerful little things, and shouldn't be treated lightly.
@Git Em SteveDave: I've *never* had to sign a form stating that I know what I'm being given when getting a prescription.
CVS is at fault. But its not wrong to take a personal reminder to be vigilant and know what drugs you are putting in one's body. The two points are in no way mutually exclusive.
Liability is with the CVS pharmacist. But protecting yourself is very important. I've had those pharmacy visits where the pharmacist wants to explain the medicine I am taking, but I don't think that happens very often. Just that conversation alone could've saved this whole situation.
What a heartbreaking messup, one loaded with factors that really show that this phramacist didn't just slip up, but blew it totally. If only it had been some allergy medicine or something, not chemo. And then in a dose more than typical as well. Triple-whammy. I'm sure the bottle and the datasheet provided had bold type saying "This is a chemotherapy drug, dispose of properly." At least the bottle in our home says this.
@basket548: But the pharmacist is a CVS employee. He is, in a sense, CVS. Who knows why the mistake was made, but it was made within CVS's procedural/organizational structure. I am assuming that the mistake was inadvertant and not due to gross negligence (i.e., the pharmacist was drunk at the time). CVS needs to take responsibility for this publicly and in any dealings with the 'outside world'. The pharmacists's consequences for this need to be between CVS and the pharmacist.
Looked at the script in the video and I definitely would have called to verify the script. Doc wrote for PTU (looks like PTLI, but whatever) 50mg. First off, abbreviatons==bad for scripts. Second the dose is crazy high: 5 tabs twice a day. PTU is Propylthiouracil which is for hyperthyroidism. Mercaptopurine (brand name = Purenithol) also comes in 50mg tablets but as stated in the story is for Leukemia.
Someone should have called to verify. All I can say after seeing the actual script. Scripts like that are way too open for interpretation.
It's a stretch to compare a pharmacist dispensing medicine to someone giving you a gun and telling you to use it.
A pharmacist is a licensed expert and is there both to physically dispense medicine and to act as a health care provider on the patient's behalf. He or she is not just filling orders. The pharmacist has a professional duty to ensure the patient receives the correct medicine.
A patient cannot be expected to know the difference between paclitaxel and paroxetene, but a pharmacist absolutely must and should make sure the patient does not receive the former when prescribed the latter.
It Dorothy's own fault. Whenever you get a prescription, you should send a sample to a third-party lab for analysis to confirm you were given the correct dosage. It doesn't even matter if the imprint, color, and size were all correct on the pill; the pill manufacturing equipment is designed and operated by *fallible humans.*
In fact, this should apply to any product you buy and consume, not just pills. If you can't be bothered to do this stuff, you deserve whatever you get.
It is so important to always read those inserts that describe the type of pill and list all the side-effects of any new drug you take.
People, even professionals, make mistakes! Doctors, lawyers, dentists, pharmacists, carpenters ... it's our responsibility to be as informed as we can.
A somewhat relevant story: The last time I went to the dentist for some in-office surgery, he prescribed naproxen sodium for pain relief along with an antibiotic. When I got the prescriptions filled, I read the info for naproxen sodium and it said right under alternate names: "Aleve". I was annoyed as there was a big bottle of Aleve already at my house. Why couldn't he just ask?
All that being said, I hope she sues and wins.
This is less than a mile from my house. They opened up in what was a bowling alley a couple of years ago. This particular CVS moved from directly across the street into the new shopping plaza. They have always been sketchy...
I had a close call with something like this. My doctor changed the dosage on one of my meds. The higher strength was a round peach colored pill. The pharmacist dumped on pill in the cap said see round peach pills, I thought nothing more and took them for three months. When I get a refill I notice they are different. I did some looking online and found out what I had been taking for three months luckily was a generic of the same drug. I was really lucky. The worst that happened was I felt crappy for three months because the generic actually doesn't work as well as the brand one in this instance. This scared the crap out of me though, it could have been something far worse like what happened to the woman in the article.
Drugs.com pill identifier is your friend. I double check everything now.
[www.drugs.com]
The overworking of pharmacists will only stop once people start suing the crap out of these companies. It has to be financially prudent for them to do the right thing. If they can kill a few people and still end up turning a profit they will keep having one overworked pharmacist with a fleet of ignorant flunkies doing the work.
First off, I really hope she is ok. It is tragic this happened. You would also think a Pharmacist would know what they are doing.
I would also like to give a little plug to your local Target Pharmacy. They put in the bottle label (with typeface big enough that even my mother can read it without her reading glasses) a nifty little pullout called the "Patient Info card" which is the patient info sheet's highlights. Open it up and it has the pill description right there. If they were to give my mom the wrong medication, it probably would not match the description. Another reason to transfer to your Target pharmacy. (NO I am not an employee of Target...just a customer).
Great way of putting it - guess I neglected to focus on the reputational aspect of what happened. That's certainly true, that employee does represent CVS. I guess what I was trying to say was that punishment should focus first and foremost on the individual, and THEN CVS, rather than the other way around.
I don't think we should jump all over CVS for this. For all we know, the pharmacist was grieving over the death of his son by influenza, and we live in the universe where George Bailey was never born. Therefore, it is God's fault.
www.drugs.com's pill identifier kind of sucks.
Of the things at my desk at work:
M 200 (translucent oval yellow tablet) - (Motrin Liquid Gels / 200 mg Ibuprofen) - Not found
L113 (white oval tablet) - (equate Dairy Digestive / 3,000 Lactase Enzyme units) - Not found
(no marking) (capsule with white powder) - ([can't remember the brand] Dairy Digestive / 9,000 Lactase Enzyme units)- Not found
L478 (round flat tablets) - (equate calcium antacid / calcium carbonate 500 mg) - Not found
0/4, yay!
Now, mind you, apart from the Ibuprofen, it'd take a miracle to OD on any of this, but that doesn't mean drugs.com's idea that parents use the pill identifier to check your teen's pill supply is a good idea. I'd hate to be "busted" because I'm lactose intolerant.
She needs to sue CVS. Part of the problem here is CVS understaffing/overworking (i.e. more assistants than allowed by law is cheaper than scheduling a 2nd pharmacist). This will cause more mistakes. When CVS gets hit by the pricetag of those mistakes via lawsuits, it will then be in their best interest to staff their pharmacies properly.
While this is not the OP's fault, it still is important for people to check their prescriptions before taking their medicines. Pharmacists and pharmacy techs are people and people do make mistakes.
@MissPeacock: You never have to sign the little screen, or have the pharmacist/tech ask you if you have any question? May I ask where you get your scripts filled?
@Sasha_Pie: Was the dosage larger than the one at your home? Ibuprofen can be prescribed, and it's usually a larger dose in a single pill than you can get OTC.
@thelushie: Wouldn't have worked in this case. The drug matched the bottle description b/c they filled the script w/ the wrong drug. One problem noted here is that in most of these cases, the people fail to read the inserts. I personally never read the little one that comes w/my Target bottle. That's mostly due to the fact I usually read the big one because it has a lot more info. Also, as I said above, once I confirm the pill, and what it does, I usually don't read them again unless my pills change. So even if the bottle itself had the description (most round bottles DO include it on their bottles, unlike Target, which uses the tab due to bottle shape), it wouldn't have helped if no one read it.
@shepd:
I'm actually kinda surprised by that. When I ran my roommate's little baggie of pills (don't ask) through drugs.com, they all came up, even the Mexican Ritalin.
Maybe it's geared toward non-OTC pills?
@shepd: Are those OTC or prescribed drugs? I think drugs.com is mostly prescribed drugs, and not OTC, as many might not fall under FDA coverage if they are supplements, so they don't require the labeling/marking "real" drugs do.
When he said "You're good!" did he wink and give a thumbs up?
I could see someone here is going to blame the victim, but I could understand a customer getting an unfamiliar drug and thinking it was a generic. Good thing she looked it up online, albeit a little late.