New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

An Ohio pharmacist is serving a jail term of 6 months in a fatal pharmacy error that killed a two-year old child.

I have blogged on this tragic story earlier. In 2006, Emily Jerry was receiving treatment for cancer at a Cleveland Hospital. She was due to leave the hospital after her treatment, and was getting a last round of chemo. However, a pharmacy technician at the hospital mixed the chemo drug with a saline solution that was more than 26 times the prescribed amount. Emily fell seriously ill as a result of the error, and died three days later. 

The pharmacist on duty at the time, had failed to catch the mistake. That pharmacist, Eric Cropp is serving a 6-month jail term. His pharmacist’s license has also been revoked. A piece on CNN shows the pharmacist as heartbroken and “teary” over the incident. The fact is however, that an innocent little girl was killed by a preventable error. Emily was ready to go home. Her parents had even planned a trip to Disneyland to celebrate her coming home free of cancer. Like her parents say, it would have been different if Emily had died of cancer. But she died at the end of her treatment program, from a horrible error that left her on life support for the last few hours of her life.

It’s hard to imagine that anything good could come out of this tragic death, but Emily’s parents have found a way to do just that. They have managed to use their tragedy for the greater good. They spearheaded efforts to pass Emily’s Law which was signed in 2009.  The law requires that prescription errors be reported to the Ohio pharmacy board, and that there be a limit on the number of technicians under a pharmacist’s supervision.

Scott Grossman is a pharmacy error lawyer representing injured victims of pharmacy errors in New Jersey and nationwide.

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A  Minnesota Health Department investigation has confirmed that a New Brighton nursing home resident died as the result of a pharmacy error. The man received the wrong formulation of an anti fungal medication, leading to kidney failure and preventing the resident from receiving proper treatment for fungal pneumonia and cancer.

The drug Amphotericin, is available in four formulations. The traditional formulation tends to have a toxic effect on the kidneys. The victim had been prescribed a different formulation of Amphotericin, but the pharmacist supplied the traditional formulation to the nursing home. It appears that the pharmacist was not aware that there was more than one formulation of the anti-fungal drug. The error was only discovered a couple of days later during a quality review. However by then, the victim has already begun to suffer from health complications. He was taken to hospital just four days after receiving the over dosage, and suffered kidney failure. He died soon after. The nursing home here was not found not at fault because the drug was mislabeled as the prescribed drug.

Last week, I blogged about a new national pharmacy error alert system that gives me some hope that preventable tragedies like these do not occur again. The American Society of Health System Pharmacists has collaborated with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to launch a national alert system to prevent medication errors. The system will monitor serious medication errors that take place around the country, and will inform the ISMP network of approximately 35,000 pharmacists, as well as other health care professionals of the error, via email. The alert will come with a complete description of the error that has occurred, as well as guidelines to prevent these from occurring at the hospital.

It’s too early to say how successful this national alert system will be, but as a pharmacy error lawyer, I fervently hope that the system will prevent the kind of errors that have contributed to the death of this Minnesota victim.

If you have had any experience with pharmacy errors in New Jersey, l want to speak with you in connection with a special TV report on pharmacy errors. Please contact me at my office.

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The family of a man has filed a lawsuit against a Rite Aid store in Michigan alleging that a medication error that occurred at a local pharmacy, contributed to his death.

The victim John Sheridan, an attorney, developed melanoma on his back in 2007. The cancer quickly spread to his brain.  In September that year, Rite Aid issued a dose of a chemotherapy drug Temodar, which was much higher than his recommended dosage. According to the prescription, Sheridan was to take 14 capsules daily of Temodar.  That was roughly 10 times the normal dosage and almost double a fatal dosage. Rite Aid failed to spot the error, and filled out the prescription. Sheridan unwittingly took the high dose, which contributed to his cancer developing rapidly. Within the next month , Sheridan was dead.

The doctor who issued the prescription has since settled with the family out of court. Sheridan’s family has filed a lawsuit against Rite Aid for issuing the lethal dose of Temodar. The family insists that the Rite Aid pharmacist should have noted the prescription error, and should have contacted Sheridan’s oncologist to inform him of the error. They failed to do so, contributing to the rapid deterioration of Sheridan’s health, and finally resulting in his death just a month later.

When you undergo treatment for an illness, you expect that doctors, nurses and pharmacists in charge of your health are completely accurate in their diagnosis and treatment.  You depend on their sense of responsibility because as an ill person, or the loved one of a patient, you really don’t have a choice but to place your trust and faith in the hands of the doctor or pharmacists. The Rite Aid pharmacy here had a golden opportunity to correct a serious medication error

If you have had any experience with pharmacy errors in New Jersey, l want to speak with you in connection with a special TV report on pharmacy errors. Please contact a pharmacy error lawyer at my office.

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USA Today has an interesting report on how pharmacy boards across many states have a majority of their board members made up of employees of major chain pharmacies, ensuring that any oversight of pharmacies or reduction of filling errors is limited at best.

The concept of having pharmacy chain employees on state pharmacy boards supposedly ensures that these boards have the expertise of seasoned professionals to draw from. While that may be true, it also ensures that the boards are staffed with a number of members who act to protect the interests of the pharmacies they work for. It reduces the concept of an "independent" state board regulating and overseeing the functioning of thousands of pharmacies in a state, to a farce.

For instance, in Illinois, the chairman of the Pharmacy Board has a day job as the national director of pharmacy affairs at Walgreen. Similarly, Pennsylvania's Board is chaired by the vice president of pharmacy services at Rite Aid. There are more such examples at Arkansas, Massachusetts and Minnesota where pharmacy chain employees occupy important positions on the board.

Nobody should be too surprised when these board members who have vested interests proceed to veto decisions that are detrimental to the interests of the chain they work for. A perfect example to illustrate the conflict of interest here is the case of Tonya Pearson, a pharmacist at a Jacksonville Walgreen outlet, whose failure to catch a prescription error led to the death of Terry Paul Smith, a construction worker. When the employee came up for disciplinary hearings, a board member who was also a pharmacist at Walgreen, vetoed a fine of $10,000 on the erring Pearson. She got away with a $1,000 fine, and an "education program" to help catch errors – something Walgreen should have put her through before it allowed her to fill prescriptions at their outlet.

Such conflict of interest has riled advocates of better separation between the regulator and the regulated. But, the status quo continues merrily, and the only sufferers are victims of prescription errors like Terry Paul Smith. It's injustices like these that inspire pharmacy misfill lawyers who often turn out to be the only line of defense against well connected, big name chain pharmacies and their widespread sphere of influence. 

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Earlier this year, I had discussed a bill introduced in the New Jersey legislature, called innocuously enough “The Pharmacy Quality Improvement and Error Prevention Act." On the surface of it, the Bill, which was passed unanimously in the Assembly in March 2006, addressed common concerns about the increasing instances of pharmacy errors, and the need for more measures to prevent these errors, and hold pharmacies accountable for the results of any prescription mistakes on their watch. The Bill also included immunity for pharmacists from any civil liability that may arise from prescription mistakes they made. In all the brouhaha over the Bill, its sponsors conveniently failed to highlight this significant point.

Now, an identical bill “The Pharmacy Quality Improvement and Error Prevention Act A-1803" has been introduced in the Assembly by Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle. She has been busy promoting her legislation, hailing it as an effective measure to prevent the number of injuries that occur because of prescription mistakes in New Jersey.  

What she does not mention anywhere in her promotion hype, is a small line tucked away in Page 9 Sec C of the bill which says:

A registered pharmacist, who reports information to the board relating to a medication-related error, as required pursuant to subsection a. of this section, shall be immune from liability in a civil action for any injury or damages in connection with that medication-related error.

If the bill becomes law, what it will mean for New Jerseyans, is that in the event that they are injured because of a prescription error, the pharmacist who was responsible for filling the prescription will not be held liable for any injuries that were caused by his mistake. All that's required for the pharmacist is essentially to report his error to the New Jersey State Board of Pharmacy, to get away with a slap on the wrist, and not much more.

As a pharmacy error lawyer, I am all for legislation to prevent errors, and the establishment of an oversight committee that will act as a watchdog to prevent innocent consumers from having to suffer the often dangerous effects of prescription mistakes. What I cannot understand however, is the establishment of a Task Force that has just two members out of its 17 public members, representing the needs of health care consumers. The remainder of the members is made up heavily of chain pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, and other allied interests.

Throughout the country, we're seeing big name pharmaceutical interests taking increasing precedence over the protection of the consumer. Whether it’s the eagerly awaited outcome of the currently ongoing Wyeth-Levine lawsuit that threatens to take away an individual's right to sue a company for injuries sustained by an FDA-approved drug, or this bill that jeopardizes the rights of New Jersey residents to claim liability when they have been injured because of pharmacy error, increasing legislative interference with the rights of citizens is a dangerous and continuing trend that must be curbed.  

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