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When dropping off and picking up a prescription from your local Walgreens pharmacy, do you ever stop to consider that a prescription error could occur? Unfortunately, medication mistakes and pharmacy errors happen every day across this nation. In fact, according to the Institute of Medicine, over 1.5 million people are harmed every year due to pharmacy and medication errors, which equates to about 4,000 people injured every single day across this nation.
These numbers are staggering to say the least and may hit close to home. Unfortunately, pharmacy errors can occur at your local Walgreens, CVS, Rite-Aid, Target, Wal-Mart, and other neighborhood pharmacies, as well as hospital pharmacies. It may not seem believable that the Walgreens pharmacist upon whom you rely to fill your prescription could make a mistake, but pharmacists are human and do make errors, such as:
- Filling the wrong medication
- Filling the correct medication but the wrong dosage
- Mislabeling the prescription
- Providing the wrong instructions
- Dispensing a prescription to the wrong customer
When any one of these pharmacy misfills and medication errors occur, patients can suffer. While certain mistakes may ultimately not affect some customers, other pharmacy errors can cause injuries to patients’ health and possibly even kill someone after they ingest the wrong medication or the take an incorrect dosage. When pharmacists hand out medication that makes customers sicker instead of healthier, they can be held liable for their wrong actions.
Even though pharmacies indicate that patient safety is their priority, most pharmacies push their pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to fill prescriptions in a shorter amount of time. This means that pharmacists may be rushing to fill or check prescriptions, which could lead to an eventual error when filling such a high quantity of prescriptions every day.
Pharmacists are supposed to check that a prescription is correct, that it is going to the correct customer, that there are no dangerous medication interactions, and that customers know when and how to take their medications. When pharmacists stop offering counseling and advice to customers to save time and fill more prescriptions, one may wonder, what else are they doing to save time?
Unfortunately, the cause of many pharmacy errors and medicine mistakes often boils down to pharmacies prioritizing quantity over quality and the accuracy of each prescription. If the corporate culture in pharmacies were to change to value quality of customer care over quantity, then pharmacy errors will be reduced and patient safety will be increased.
If you have been harmed due to a pharmacy misfill, mistake, or error, you should contact a knowledgeable pharmacy malpractice attorney regarding your Walgreens pharmacy error claim. Call Kennedy Hodges to speak with an experienced lawyer who has successfully represented many individuals who have suffered the results of pharmacy errors. Call 888-526-7616 for a free consultation today, and to request a free copy of our report, How to Make Pharmacies Pay for Injuries Caused by Medication Errors.