CHATHAM, NJ- In what CEO Larry Merlo described as an "exciting new development for the profession of pharmacy" CVS, the nation's second largest drug retailer, today announced the beginning of a unique clinical study into the effectiveness of prophylactic breast cancer treatment. In cooperation with, apparently no one, 50 children given prescriptions for the common cavity prevention medicine sodium fluoride were instead given the breast cancer drug tamoxifen. Patients will be monitored over the course of their lives to measure the effect of an early-life course of tamoxifen on eventual rates of breast cancer development.
"Everyone talks about the role of pharmacy evolving into taking on more clinical functions" Merlo said at the office of CVS' corporate attorney. "And while the spread of pharmacist immunizations and medication therapy management services have certainly been steps in that direction, we are pleased today to become the first pharmacy organization to offer its own complete scientific study. We look forward to publishing our results and contributing valuable knowledge to the fight against this terrible condition."
Outside experts, while welcoming any effort to find a cure for a disease that kills almost 40,000 people a year, cited several problems in the study's design, including its rather large control group compared to number of active drug subjects, limiting its location to one neighborhood in this New Jersey town, and even the need to know how cancer meds affect healthy small children. One aspect drew almost universal praise however.
"We can rest assured that this is indeed a double blind placebo setup" said Robert Klinghoffer, director of clinical research at the Ohio State University school of medicine. "As it is obvious no one ever looked in any container of fluoride that went out of that store over the course of two months."
Seriously. Fifty fucking prescriptions. Over the course of two months. And no one bothered to look. This isn't a case of the occasional horrifying misfill. This is a case of obviously no one paying attention. Matching the markings to the picture is the last thing you do before you let a prescription go, or maybe I'm just a little old school that way.
Reached for comment, a Rite Aid spokesman said, "Oh sweet mother of mercy. Thank God this didn't happen to us during that 15 minute guarantee promotion."
(Thanks to the alert readers who tipped me to this story. A record number of them. Which tells me there are a lot of people out there who really.....really......hate CVS. )
11 comments:
Want to get really pissed off? Read the article's comments on nj.com.
Too bad we don't live in Singapore. Someone needs to be flogged for this.
touche'
Somebody didn't scan the factory label when they filled their dispensing robot! Probably one of the new "techs" they hired straight out of high school, to reduce hours of the "deadwood" (meaning higher paid)employees. Yup. A few CBT's and 20 hours of training - good to go! No bitterness here.
This story has so many "holes" in it... here are my thoughts
http://healthblog.steveariens.com/?p=72
Now they are claiming that this was a "restocking issue"
http://newjerseyhills.com/chatham_courier/news/cvs-official-restocking-issue-mixed-cancer-fluoride-pills-at-chatham/article_f988b298-64ae-11e1-8844-001871e3ce6c.html
Huh.
Wonder if Medco has seen this yet.
http://www.massmarketretailers.com/inside-this-issue/news/03-05-2012/pending-pbm-merger-draws-fire-from-rx
Fine...the machine was stocked incorrectly, but when I worked in a CVS with a robot, I still visually verified every Rx that left. Insane.
A restocking issue...I could see that...Seeing how they measure everything now they measure pharmacy return to stocks that outdate and get pulled of the shelf...Probably someone who didn't want to get verbally lashed by his/her supervisor for having too many pharmacy vials being outdated and sent back so they decided to combine them back into the original container...Thats my guess...Instead of creating an environment where it is rewarding and easy to do the right thing they have made it very difficult. This is why they keep running into these problems...It makes it damn near impossible to do one's job
CVS is a top heavy organization that doesn't give two shits about their customers or the people working for them. All they care about is the numbers they come up with each year they think are important...which really aren't important at all.
I think I know how this happened. Something similar happened at my pharmacy once (not CVS). The overnighter has put a pill that looked almost identical to the correct pill in the robot. Thing is even the whole bottle was like 100 out 400 pills in the thing. So only 1 in 4 pills was wrong. The AM pharmacist filled 2 rxs for it and checked both visually. But how many pill do you look at when you check a rx? They were all the right color/shape/size so the only way to know they were wrong was to see the markings. Luckily the first rx I filled for it I saw the incorrect markings and we got ahold of the patients before they took the medication but it would have been very easy for me to miss several of these as well.
We are not looking at the whole picture. Why is there even a cavity prevention pill? It's called genetics and hygiene. Is society so lazy that brushing our teeth has become a chore?
Post a Comment