Wolves Protecting the Sheep? The Sham of Pharmacy Chain Employees on State Boards Guarding Customer Interests
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.
