Tracey Gehrke didn’t know. How could she have? The bottle she took home from a suburban Chicago Walgreens said Phenobarbital, and it was Pheonbarbital that her doctor prescribed for her seven-month old daughter, Alexandra.
The medicine was supposed to be a precaution against seizures for Alexandra, but instead it induced seizures. Very severe seizures.
Why did Alexandra have seizures? Because the medicine in bottle was not Phenobarbital, but rather a medication for adult diabetes. As Tracy Gehrke puts it, “I was poisoning my baby, and I didn’t know it.”
Alexandra Gehrke is now 12 years old. She cannot walk, talk or feed herself. She suffered severe brain damage brought on by an incorrect prescription. Doctors say that she will never recover.
Meanwhile, the pharmacist responsible for the error, William Zaeske, still works at Walgreens. In fact, he has been promoted to manager by a nearby store.
In 2004, Walgreens was ordered to pay $21 million in damages to the Gehrkes.
In 2007, Walgreens was in the hot seat again. This time they were ordered to pay $25.8 million for the death of Beth Hippely, a 42 year-old mother of four in Florida.
In the summer of 2002, Hippely was diagnosed with cancer in her right breast. However, the early detection made her prognosis favorable with a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and drug treatment. (Searcy Law.)
After undergoing cycles of chemotherapy, Beth was prescribed a blood thinner that is lethal in high doses. A pharmacy technician who was still in high school incorrectly filled Beth’s Walfarin prescription with 10mg tablets instead of 1mg. As a result, Beth suffered a massive stroke and was forced to forego further chemotherapy. She suffered horribly from her brain injury and had to relearn how to walk, talk and eat. In 2006, Beth’s cancer returned. On Jan. 8, 2007, Beth passed away (Seacy Law.)
In 2007, a Florida jury awarded the family of Beth Hippely $25.8 million dollars.
“The jury found that the negligence of Walgeens not only caused her initial brain injury, but also found that it was the cause of her breast cancer recurring and subsequently her death,” said Hippley attorney Chris Searcy (ABC News.)
Accroding to Searcy, Walgreen’s refused to take full responsibility for the tragedy throughout the trial. Instead, they blamed Beth’s physicians and Beth herself for failing to spot their error! Tracey Gehrke also said that she never received an apology from Walgreens. Even worse, Walgreen’s never reported the error to state or federal agencies. Why? Because they didn’t have to.
Forty-six out of fifty states do not require pharmacies to report errors (ABC News.) In light of cases like those above, many fear that unreported pharmacy errors may be an epidemic. However, the very fact that there is no requirement to report means that there are no reliable figures to gauge the scope of the problem.
The bad news is that this scenario leaves consumers at the mercy of big pharmaceutical companies that may or may not be held responsible for their mistakes. Because the status quo plays plays right into the hands of the chain drug stores, they seek to keep it this way.
“I don’t think pharmacy errors should be publicized,” said Mary Ann Wagner, vice president of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Wagner said that while there is a “tremendous amount of concern” about pharmacy errors in the industry, no one “keeps track of them.”
Wagner claims that chain stores are throwing huge sums of money in high-tech solutions and new training to curb the problem. In a statement released after the Gehrke case, Walgreens told ABC News that it had spent $1 billion in “redundant pharmacy safety training” over the past ten years.
However, if chains like Walgreens insist on throwing large sums of money at a problem, wouldn’t it be prudent to know the scope of the problem they were confronting?
In a press release after the Gehrke verdict Walgreens said, ”We deeply regret the few errors that have occurred among the more than 500 million prescriptions we fill each year at our 5,600 phramacies.”
While the latter two numbers are figured rather neatly, the “few” is inadequately vague. Because the stakes of giving the wrong prescription is a matter of life and death, the only acceptable number of pharmacy errors is 0.
Chain drug stores are billion dollar businesses that people depend on for their health and vitality. It is imperative that they give the right medicines to their customers in the right doses. The fact that these businesses refuse to keep track of their mistakes mean that the public needs to give them sharp correctives when they make a mistake. Unfortunately, no amount of money will return Beth Hippely to her family, nor will it restore the faculties of Alexandra Gehrke.
Without health, nothing else matters. When we go to the pharmacy, we trust them as we trust our doctors to give us the right drugs. This is our right as consumers. It is their obligation to us. If you or a loved one have been a victim of pharmacy error, speak up and be heard. Contact Dolan Law for your free consultation.
-Steven Flores
Sources Attributed
ABC News. “U.S. Phramacy Errors: Unreported Epidemic?” 29 Mar, 2007
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/03/us_pharmacy_err.html
Searcy Law. “$25.8 Million Verdict Against Walgreens in Presciption Error”
http://www.searcylaw.com/files/$25.8%20Million%20Verdict%20Against%20Walgreens%20in%20Prescription%20Error.bbf3c378-5b8d-4c17-93bc-9035e4d904de.pdf
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