Did you know that malpractice can occur even at your pharmacy? It happens. The most common types of pharmacy errors involve the improper combination of medications, drug name errors, concentration or dose errors, physician handwriting misreads by the pharmacist or mistakes that the industry refers to as “misfills.”

Consider the problem of a misfill in the context of what makes a pharmaceutical negligence case. A misfill occurs when a pharmacist, pharmacy tech, or pharmacy assistant mistakenly puts the wrong pills or medication in the bottle or tube and the patient takes the wrong drug home and takes the medicine. It is important to remember that pharmaceutical malpractice is a subset of medical malpractice and the same tough rules which govern medical malpractice cases also govern those in pharmacy negligence cases. In any medical malpractice case, the most important factors are liability and damages. So in the pharmaceutical context, some pharmacy employee has to be liable for what happened, and you must have suffered damages. Due to the high cost and length of time involved in any type of medical malpractice case, we only handle cases where the medical mistake results in significant damages to the patient.

So what kind of a case against a pharmacist is a good case, and what kind is not a good case? Imagine that a patient with a standing prescription for an blood pressure medication regularly refills that prescription monthly. Since the patient has been taking the drug for years, the patient usually refills the prescription about a week early so he never runs out. The patient becomes familiar with the size, shape and color of the medication. One day the patient brings home a new bottle of the medication from the pharmacy and notices that the pills look different than they ever looked before. Out of an abundance of caution the patient returns to the pharmacy and the pharmacist confirms that the medication is not the correct medication. The patient never took even one of the pills and never missed a dose of the correct medication because he always made sure that he never ran out of pills. That patient has established liability, in other words, the pharmacist is liable for the misfill. However, the patient has no damages. In other words, it’s a mistake that never ended in an injury. The worst thing that happened to the patient is that they were inconvenienced. In such a case, we would not be interested in representing the patient. Remember that in a negligence case a jury can only compensate you for damages that you actually suffered, and the damages here are negligible.

On the other hand, take a slightly different situation with a different result. A patient develops a bad infection for which the physician prescribes a strong antibiotic. The pharmacist misfills the prescription, instead filling the bottle with a cholesterol medication. The patient has no idea that the drug in the bottle is the wrong drug and takes the medication. Instead of getting better, the patient gets worse, and ends up hospitalized because of the progression of the infection. That patient has a pharmaceutical negligence case. However, the question still needs to be addressed as to whether the damages are sufficient to warrant such a case. If the patient spent the night in the hospital and then went home, we would probably not be interested in representing the patient unless there were other complicating circumstances. Remember that in a negligence case a jury can only compensate you for damages that you actually suffered, and the damages are probably not enough. However, if the misfill resulted in a substantial hospital stay, medical complications, or other damages, we would evaluate the case and determine whether we could help you. Remember, the last thing you need is a lawyer telling you that you have a great case when you don’t.

If you’ve read the material above, and you still think that you might have a pharmaceutical malpractice claim, please CONTACT US.