Location: Southern US
This mistake happened in December. My wife and I just found out she has been taking a total of 200 (mg I think)instead of 80 something of a thyroid medication.. When her dosage was increased by 12.5 by the doctor they entered 125.
This has led to multiple physical therapy appointments, joint pain, chest pain, headaches, and finally 3 trips to the ER in the past 2 weeks because my wife couldn’t stand without her pulse jumping to 140 and her blood oxygen plummeting. She was basically bed ridden for the past 2 weeks, missing work. Yesterday, one of the doctors finally verified her meds and told my wife the pharmacy assumed something to do with mxg was written as something else on the prescription and entered it under a different conversion. This has put strain on all her major organs as well. This is a major nationwide pharmacy. It will now take up to 3 months for her body to regulate. They told her she can not work for at least 2 weeks because it requires her to sit and stand repeatedly. She is out of PTO and will now have to go on FMLA.
The other issue with all of this, she was already on FMLA for almost a year with an aggressive breast cancer.(The immunotherapy messed up her thyroid) We don’t know that it will get approved. Her employer is awesome, but this is really going to push it when she puts the request in. This could affect promotions, raises, etc as she is in an upper management role with boots on the ground for sales.
How screwed is this major pharmacy?
Comments
Pharmacists have a duty to use reasonable care and professional judgment. If they fail to do so, they could be liable for any damages this causes. Since it sounds like your wife has substantial damages here, you need to speak to a medical malpractice attorney in your area.
I hope she feels better soon.
One observation to emphasize at this point is to save the bottles (plus the actual pills) and anything else in paper or electronic form as potential evidence in this case. (Although definately place the actual pills and possibly bottle in some location where your wife could not possibly take it by accident at this point.)
> How screwed is this major pharmacy?
This should not be your concern now, your concern should be for your wife.
Pharmacist here. Levothyroxine is available in mcg, not mg. The provider should not be writing the prescription in mg as that has been known to cause medications errors. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices has routinely warned prescribers against this.
When a dosage is increased the pharmacy requires a new prescription with the new dose on it. It almost sounds like the prescriber sent in a separate prescription (it isn’t unheard of for people to receive two doses of levothyroxine) and wanted her to take both doses? But levothyroxine isn’t commercially available in the US for 12.5 mcg, the prescriber would need to write for levothyroxine 25 mcg half tablet daily. Are you saying the prescriber wrote for a strength not commercially available using mg? So they wrote levothyroxine 0.0125 mg as the dose and the pharmacy misread that as levothyroxine 0.125 mg which is 125 mcg?
A lot of unanswered questions here. Your first step should be to ask the pharmacy for a printed copy of the prescription. If the pharmacy made an error you can ask to speak with the pharmacy manager and see what they say. It is very likely your direct costs may be taken care of without a lawyer, but your hypothetical future promotion costs would likely not be. If the pharmacy did in fact make a mistake and you aren’t happy with the offered solution then you can speak to a lawyer.
Was it the pharmacy that misread the prescription or the doctor/PA that entered the prescription incorrectly? Most prescriptions are sent through an electronic system rather than faxed or handwritten. My advice is to save all bottles and pills as well as any paperwork that you have.
Hire an attorney and take the next steps.
You are entitled to damages. But you need to figure out who made the mistake.