Pharmacy Medication Error is the Hidden Epidemic that KILLS more than 7,000 people each year

That’s right; more than 7,000 people die each year due to pharmacies making serious medication errors. To put this in perspective, more people die from medication errors every year than die from AIDS or car accidents. There are probably more people killed or permanently injured, as well as temporarily harmed by pharmacy errors, than statistics show. There is no federal regulation that requires pharmacies to report their errors, so error reporting is sporadic at best.

According to a spokesperson for the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, this number is only expected to rise as the number of pharmacists shrinks and the number of prescriptions goes up, as it has every year for the last ten years.

Even if you recovered from the error in a week or a few days you may still have a valid claim to sue the pharmacy that injured you. Such claims serve not only in your own financial interest, but they also serve to deter future errors that could harm others. The takeaway point is that corporate America does not hear you unless you affect their pocketbook.

Whether the pharmacy switched labels on your medications, gave you another customer’s medication or they were ultimately responsible for a loved one’s death, there are steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

You may wonder why there have been so many errors in recent years in pharmacies. The reasons are simple and disturbing:

• Pharmacists are decreasing in number, even though prescriptions are increasing in number.

• There just aren’t enough pharmacists working at each pharmacy.

• Pharmacists at large retail chains like CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and many others are overworked and overwhelmed. They put in 12–14-hour days, often with no real breaks. Instead of consulting with another pharmacist on duty, they supervise “technicians,” who only have the authority and training to count pills and transcribe information from prescriptions or their automated systems. These companies don’t care about their workers at all. They don’t care about you. They care about profits.

• Doctors often have illegible handwriting, making it hard to read a prescription properly and making it easy to misinterpret.

• Office assistants, nurses, and pharmacy techs can transcribe the prescription incorrectly, and without checking behind each other, mistakes are going to happen.

I am not writing this to vilify pharmacists. They are good people, but they are overworked by greedy corporations who don’t care that fatigue and poor working conditions contribute to medication errors by pharmacists and technicians alike.

The fact remains that there is no acceptable reason for 7,000 people to die every single year because of pharmacy errors. Medication mistakes are occurring at an alarming rate because companies don’t want to pay the cost of hiring additional pharmacists. Having one pharmacist on shift, and three or four technicians keeps costs down and profits up. If we do not complain about this hidden epidemic, it will continue to worsen. If companies are not forced to face the terrible damage they have caused by their own negligence, medication errors are going to skyrocket, and the companies will not change. Our complaints and our lawsuits will give them the incentive to change their policies.