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Pharmaceutical errors are often devastating for patients. Unfortunately, medication mistakes occur more often than most people realize in and around the Los Angeles area. At the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., our dedicated team is standing by to help if you need a Los Angeles Pharmaceutical Error Attorney by your side.
With his education, training, and experience as an attorney and a pharmacist, Mr. Marcarian can help you or your loved one get compensation. Call us at 800-924-3784 or 818-995-8787 without obligation.
According to the Institute of Medicine, at least 1.5 million Americans are sickened, injured, or killed each year by errors in prescribing, dispensing, and taking medications. It is estimated that as many as 7,000 deaths occur annually in the United States from incorrect prescriptions.
The problem is getting worse as the annual number of prescriptions dispensed increases. While prescription drug dispensing errors can occur in all types of practice settings, retail chain drug stores and prescription mail-order houses have been responsible for the majority of the prescription drug dispensing errors causing serious personal injuries and morbidity in the U.S.
Errors at retail chain drug stores and mail order facilities can occur for many reasons, including when:
How can errors happen at a pharmacy? Aren’t pharmacists supposed to be trained, licensed professionals?
Most prescription drug-related errors occurring at retail chain drug stores and mail-order houses occur because these operations are generally understaffed and their employees are overworked, which is a potentially deadly combination. These operations place their economic welfare above your interests by not hiring enough pharmacists and other trained employees.
Prescription drug errors also occur because similar drug names can be confused. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 drugs with similar names. Some examples of similar-sounding drug names are Zantac (for acid reflux) and Xanax (for anxiety).
Here are some valuable tips to protect yourself and your loved ones:
If you or somebody you love has been injured due to a pharmaceutical error in or around the Los Angeles area, reach out to the team at the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., for help as soon as possible. Our attorneys have extensive experience handling complex malpractice and medication error cases, and we understand what it takes to help clients recover the compensation they are entitled to. This can include coverage of:
When you need a Los Angeles Pharmaceutical Error Attorney or pharmacist license attorney, you can contact us for a consultation of your case by clicking here or calling 818-995-8787 or 800-924-3784.
Armond Marcarian: Prescription overdose typically occurs when a patient either intentionally or otherwise takes more of the drug than was prescribed for the patient. There are times when prescriptions are taken, even if the prescription taken was not ordered for that particular patient, and the patient intentionally ingests excessive amounts, thereby causing injury or death.
Armond Marcarian: Having a legal case would all depend on whether or not taking the incorrect drug and/or taking the incorrect dose results in injury. There are times when a patient will be given an incorrect drug, take it for a few days, start not feeling well, and bring it to the doctor’s attention. Once the drug is discontinued, the symptoms subside within a short period, and there is no injury to the patient. In a case like that, speaking only for our office, we would not be interested in pursuing a lawsuit because I do not believe there would be a legal claim.
Armond Marcarian: If the pharmacy dispenses the wrong medication or the wrong dosage and a patient ingests the medication, it will turn on whether or not there is an injury to the patient as a result of the wrong dosage or the wrong drug. If there is no injury, there will not be a legal claim. However, if the matter was brought to the attention of the California State Board of Pharmacy, there would be some administrative and disciplinary action initiated by the Board against the pharmacy and the pharmacist who dispensed the wrong drug or the wrong dosage.
Armond Marcarian: Because of the pharmacist’s education, training, and experience, he or she is required to monitor a patient’s drug usage. Typically, what happens is that a patient presents a prescription to the pharmacy, and, assuming that patient has a prescription profile at that particular pharmacy, the pharmacist is required to review the drug history for that patient and make a clinical judgment as to whether or not dispensing the new prescription can potentially interact with the other prescriptions the patient has been on. In busier retail pharmacies and mail-order houses, in particular, that process is not followed quite the way it is supposed to be. You typically see drug-drug interactions that are, at times, fatal and certainly result in hospital admissions. That is an area of concern, and it happens frequently. The pharmacist can be held liable for having failed to discharge his obligations to monitor and assess drug-drug interactions.
Armond Marcarian: Issues relating to CURES reporting and the mandates of CURES reporting are hot-button issues not only in California but in the whole country. What a CURES Report does is identify all the controlled substances that a patient has received from all of the pharmacies in California and all of the doctors who have prescribed those controlled substances. The purpose of the CURES Report is to flag down if you will, the patient who may be a chronic medication user or abuser. For instance, a patient walks into a pharmacy, say on Wilshire, and gets a prescription filled for Valium from a Dr. Smith, and the next day goes to a Dr. Jones and gets another prescription for Valium, and then goes to a Hollywood pharmacy and gets that prescription filled, and on the next day attempts to get yet another Valium prescription from a third doctor filled at a third pharmacy. If that third pharmacy runs a CURES report for the patient, it would identify the previous two Valium prescriptions that the patient has received. Now, that brings up what is called a “corresponding responsibility”. What that means is that the third pharmacist has a corresponding responsibility with the prescriber to ensure, as in my example, that the Valium prescription was issued for a legitimate medical purpose. A strong argument can be made that getting three different Valium prescriptions on three consecutive days from three different prescribers may not be for a legitimate medical purpose. So, when the pharmacist runs the CURES Report and can identify the usage by this patient of Valium, as in my example, he now must contact the prescriber to find out more details about why the prescriber is prescribing additional Valium for this patient. The third prescriber may or may not have been aware that two other prescribers prescribed the same medication. That is the utility of the CURES Report. It is not the standard of care, however, in the state of California, it is now mandatory for every pharmacy to run a CURES Report. However, I tell my clients that I almost guarantee them that if the pharmacy does not run the CURES Report on a fairly routine basis, the California State Board of Pharmacy will be looking at them, and, depending on the circumstances, they could bring an accusation to revoke the pharmacist’s license and the pharmacy’s permit even though it is not the standard of care.
Contact our Pharmacy Attorneys or Pharmacist License Attorneys
Contact our Pharmacist License Attorney or Marcarian Law Firm, P.C., for a consultation concerning your particular situation at 800-924-3784.