COVID-19 Mess May Lead to Prescription Mistakes

For Alyssa Watrous, the medicine prescription mistakes led to a pounding headache, vomiting, and dizziness. In September, Watrous, a 17-year-old from Connecticut, was about to take another asthma tablet when she received CVS had wrongly given her blood pressure medicine planned for someone else.

For Mary Scheuerman, 85, the error was detected only when she was dying in a Florida clinic in December 2018. A Publix drugstore had given a potent chemotherapy drug instead of the antidepressant her doctor had commanded. She died about two next weeks.

The people least frightened by such errors are pharmacologists working in some of the nation’s largest retail chains.

Security Matters

In letters to state administrative boards and in conversations with The New York Times, many pharmacologists at businesses like CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens reported understaffed and chaotic workplaces where they said it had become challenging to complete their jobs safely, putting the people at risk of prescription mistakes.

They struggle to choose directions, give flu shots, tend the drive-through, answer telephones, work the register, counsel the sufferers and call doctors and security organizations, they told — all the while racing to meet corporate production metrics that they described as unreasonable and unsafe in an industry pressed to do more with less.

“I am a threat to the public working for CVS,” one pharmacologist wrote in an unsigned letter to the Texas State Board of Pharmacy in April.

Faults In Drug Supply

State committees and associations in at least two dozen states have heard from troubled pharmacologists, discussions and records show, while some doctors complain that pharmacies bombard them with questions for refills that sufferers have not required for and should not receive. Such refills are exactly tracked through drugstore chains and can factor into worker tips.

The American Psychiatric Association is especially concerned on CVS, the U.S.’ eighth-largest partnership, which it said routinely ignores doctors’ explicit directions to dispense limited amounts of medicine to mental health sufferers. The pharmacy’s tradition of providing three-month supplies may accidentally lead more sufferers to endeavor suicide by overdosing, the organization stated.

Setting the chains — five rank among the nation’s 100 biggest corporations — has proved difficult for state medicine boards, which oversee the industry but sometimes allow partnership agents to hold seats. Florida’s nine-member board, for example, includes a lawyer for CVS and a leader of medicine affairs at Walgreens.

Aside from creating potential conflicts of interest, the production attendance can stifle objections.

Client Worrying

The business has been squeezed amid failing drug payment rates and cost pressures from managers of prescription medication plans. Incorporation, while, has left only a few notable players. About 70% of medicines nationwide are dispensed by chain drug stores, supermarkets, or retailers like Walmart, according to a 2019 Drug Channels Institute news.

CVS garners one-quarter of the country’s total medicine revenue and manages more than 1 billion medicines a year. Walgreens takes almost 20%. Walmart, Kroger, and Rite Aid fall next in line among brick-and-mortar buildings.

In reports, the drugstore chains said the sufferer safety was of utmost concern, with staffing correctly set to guarantee accurate dispensing. Investment in technology such as e-prescribing has improved security and performance, and reduce prescription mistakes rate, the organizations announced. They rejected that pharmacologists were under extreme pressure or faced retaliation.

New Data

“When a pharmacologist has a legitimate interest about working conditions, we make every attempt to discuss that concern in good faith,” CVS announced in a report. Walgreens has indicated its classified worker hotline and said it made “clear to all pharmacologists that they should never work beyond what they consider is desirable.”

Mistakes, the organizations said, were unfortunate but rare; they refused to contribute data about errors.

The specifics and severity of errors are nearly inaccessible to tally. Aside from lax reporting obligations, many mistakes never become public because businesses settle with victims or their families, often requiring a confidentiality arrangement.