Chain pharmacies and mistakes

ABC's 20/20 reported last week about errors pharmacists make when filling out prescriptions. They investigated a several chain drug stores that pride themselves in filling out scripts quickly. From The Blotter:

The ABC test was designed and supervised by Auburn's Dr. Betsy Flynn, a specialist in studying errors in neighborhood pharmacies who designed a similar undercover test for ABC News over a decade ago.

"The 22 percent error rate found in the study was unacceptable," said Flynn, who expressed her "surprise and disappointment" that "despite all of the implementation of technology over the past 12 years, the error rate was similar to the previous study."

Well, that wasn't the worst of it. The Blotter reports that they received letters from pharmacists putting the blame on working conditions. Here's one:

"What people don't know is that pharmacists are ALWAYS getting interrupted" by phone calls from patients and doctors, problems with insurance companies and other distractions, she wrote. "Next time you want to talk about chain drug stores, show the other side of the counter."

"There are just too many interruptions to focus on the task of checking for errors and drug interactions when filling a script," wrote "Doug," who said he was a pharmacist. The job's long hours without a pause are also difficult, he said. "I have to work 12-hour shifts," he wrote. "There are no lunch breaks or any breaks for that matter...I feel like I'm working in a sweat shop!"

Of course, this is referring specifically to chain pharmacies like Rite Aid and Walgreen's.

The drive to quicker and easier profits is resulting a huge number of mistakes, and apparenlty people are signing away their rights without knowing it:

Despite federal and state laws that require pharmacists to provide counseling to customers picking up new medications, patient counseling was only offered in 27 out of 100 purchases of new prescriptions, less than a third, in the ABC-Auburn Study.

Particularly alarming to the Auburn experts was the chain pharmacies' failure to warn patients of potentially harmful interactions when they purchased certain over-the-counter medications, such as adult strength aspirin with Coumadin, a blood thinner. In only eight cases out of 25 were the customers given a verbal warning.

Finally, the study revealed that some pharmacies appear to be misleading customers into signing away their right to patient counseling.

Although the ABC producers paid with cash and no insurance was involved, in most cases they were still asked to sign at the pharmacy counter to pick up their prescriptions. But with only a few exceptions, our producers were never told they were signing forms that also included language to waive the legal right to counseling with a pharmacist.

'Nuff said.