J
julz20684
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An article off of Baynet.com: Reader's Letter: CVS Almost Over Dosed My Child. Great Mills 11/13/2006 By "A local mom"
On Thursday, Nov. 1, 2006, my 7-year-old daughter was diagnosed with ADHD. That day, her pediatrician prescribed her 18 mg Concerta tablets, as that was a low-dose medication to get her started on treatment.
I took the prescription to my local CVS Pharmacy in California, and began giving her the medication the next morning. That day, she showed signs of an adverse reaction and when I contacted her pediatrician, he said to give the medication a few days and that it was probably just her body adjusting.
Three-days later (Sunday), the symptoms faded some, but weren't gone all the way, so I decided to do some additional research into Concerta on www.webmd.com. What I found disturbed me...my local CVS gave my daughter the incorrect medication.
Instead of filling her bottle with the 18 mg tablets, it was filled with 36 mg tablets. The label on the bottle was correct, but the pills inside were not. I immediately contacted the pharmacist and placed a call to the on-call pediatrician.
CVS showed very little remorse for the error, but I decided to make the trip to the pharmacy and exchange the incorrect pills for the correct ones. While there, I was treated very poorly. The pharmacist informed me that they would contact my daughter's pediatrician in the morning and submit an "Incident Report".
When I requested a copy of the report, she rudely informed me that "it's an internal document for corporate" and she said I could speak to her supervisor. Normally, I would have talked to the supervisor, but I was more concerned with getting my daughter medical attention to make sure she was not physically damaged by the error.
The on-call pediatrician called me and recommended that I contact the Maryland Poison Control Center for the drug-reaction facts and for further directions. After talking to Poison Control, I made the decision to take my daughter to St. Mary's Hospital for a quick evaluation.
The next morning, I contacted her pediatrician and he said he needed to see her as soon as possible. I immediately left work and got my daughter from school. Her pediatrician performed various tests (EKG and blood work) to make sure there was no damage to her heart since this medication can cause heart damage.
Thankfully, everything came back normal, but because of the error, my daughter missed 2 days of school, I missed 3 days of work and our entire family had to face the reality that my daughter could have been seriously injured long-term because I trusted people who are in positions of great trust.
While talking to the nurses at SMH, I learned that they too had similar experiences with CVS at the same location and they no longer use CVS. That motivated me to talk to other parents, nurses and friends, and learned that this kind of medication error has happened on many occasions at several different locations in St. Mary's and Calvert Counties.
One story that is just as shocking as my daughters deals with a friend's cousin: He fell ill with a virus and his doctor prescribed an antibiotic. His mother took the prescription to CVS in Solomon's to have it filled and when she got home and opened the bottle, she noticed right away that the pills didn't look right (she's raised 4 children and knew what an antibiotic should look like).
She pulled out her medication cross-reference book and found CVS filled her sons bottle with heart medication instead of the antibiotic. Again, the label was correct, the bottle was filled wrong. I heard that story again last night from a life-long friends mother who is a nurse at Calvert Memorial Hospital, who has no connection to my friends cousin.
These types of errors are simply inexcusable. I'm not a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or anything else in the medical field, so I don't know what a certain pill should look like or what a certain medication should do. I should feel confident that those individuals who fill these positions are competent and it's become obvious that those working at our local CVS Pharmacies are not.
If these kinds of errors are occurring with the frequency that I'm hearing, then the CVS Corporate office needs to do something. CVS is supposed to file an incident report for each error that occurs and with the number of errors I'm hearing about, you'd think there would be a red-flag and the Corporate office would do something ... provide additional training for the pharmacy technicians and pharmacists, contact those effected by these errors to make sure there was no harm done, something to prove that these issues are being escalated and addressed.
I have emailed the corporate office regarding the incident report and also intend on sending them a copy of this letter. I learned a lesson the hard way...don't trust anyone. From now on, I'll be having my prescriptions filled by a different pharmacy and no one in my house will take anything until we've verified the medication on www.webmd.com or another reputable medical website.
On Thursday, Nov. 1, 2006, my 7-year-old daughter was diagnosed with ADHD. That day, her pediatrician prescribed her 18 mg Concerta tablets, as that was a low-dose medication to get her started on treatment.
I took the prescription to my local CVS Pharmacy in California, and began giving her the medication the next morning. That day, she showed signs of an adverse reaction and when I contacted her pediatrician, he said to give the medication a few days and that it was probably just her body adjusting.
Three-days later (Sunday), the symptoms faded some, but weren't gone all the way, so I decided to do some additional research into Concerta on www.webmd.com. What I found disturbed me...my local CVS gave my daughter the incorrect medication.
Instead of filling her bottle with the 18 mg tablets, it was filled with 36 mg tablets. The label on the bottle was correct, but the pills inside were not. I immediately contacted the pharmacist and placed a call to the on-call pediatrician.
CVS showed very little remorse for the error, but I decided to make the trip to the pharmacy and exchange the incorrect pills for the correct ones. While there, I was treated very poorly. The pharmacist informed me that they would contact my daughter's pediatrician in the morning and submit an "Incident Report".
When I requested a copy of the report, she rudely informed me that "it's an internal document for corporate" and she said I could speak to her supervisor. Normally, I would have talked to the supervisor, but I was more concerned with getting my daughter medical attention to make sure she was not physically damaged by the error.
The on-call pediatrician called me and recommended that I contact the Maryland Poison Control Center for the drug-reaction facts and for further directions. After talking to Poison Control, I made the decision to take my daughter to St. Mary's Hospital for a quick evaluation.
The next morning, I contacted her pediatrician and he said he needed to see her as soon as possible. I immediately left work and got my daughter from school. Her pediatrician performed various tests (EKG and blood work) to make sure there was no damage to her heart since this medication can cause heart damage.
Thankfully, everything came back normal, but because of the error, my daughter missed 2 days of school, I missed 3 days of work and our entire family had to face the reality that my daughter could have been seriously injured long-term because I trusted people who are in positions of great trust.
While talking to the nurses at SMH, I learned that they too had similar experiences with CVS at the same location and they no longer use CVS. That motivated me to talk to other parents, nurses and friends, and learned that this kind of medication error has happened on many occasions at several different locations in St. Mary's and Calvert Counties.
One story that is just as shocking as my daughters deals with a friend's cousin: He fell ill with a virus and his doctor prescribed an antibiotic. His mother took the prescription to CVS in Solomon's to have it filled and when she got home and opened the bottle, she noticed right away that the pills didn't look right (she's raised 4 children and knew what an antibiotic should look like).
She pulled out her medication cross-reference book and found CVS filled her sons bottle with heart medication instead of the antibiotic. Again, the label was correct, the bottle was filled wrong. I heard that story again last night from a life-long friends mother who is a nurse at Calvert Memorial Hospital, who has no connection to my friends cousin.
These types of errors are simply inexcusable. I'm not a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or anything else in the medical field, so I don't know what a certain pill should look like or what a certain medication should do. I should feel confident that those individuals who fill these positions are competent and it's become obvious that those working at our local CVS Pharmacies are not.
If these kinds of errors are occurring with the frequency that I'm hearing, then the CVS Corporate office needs to do something. CVS is supposed to file an incident report for each error that occurs and with the number of errors I'm hearing about, you'd think there would be a red-flag and the Corporate office would do something ... provide additional training for the pharmacy technicians and pharmacists, contact those effected by these errors to make sure there was no harm done, something to prove that these issues are being escalated and addressed.
I have emailed the corporate office regarding the incident report and also intend on sending them a copy of this letter. I learned a lesson the hard way...don't trust anyone. From now on, I'll be having my prescriptions filled by a different pharmacy and no one in my house will take anything until we've verified the medication on www.webmd.com or another reputable medical website.
