WalMart wins again

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by recluse

It may not be much, but I no longer shop at Wal-Mart because of what they did to your son.

Wal-Mart is not a conscious creature. "Wal-Mart" didn't do that to her son-- one pharmacist working at one Wal-Mart location made an error-- which can and does happen at pharmacies all over the country (and the world.) One person's careless (not malicious) mistake destroyed her son's life-- not a company. (And as this drags on, it is likely that one person will have his/her life destroyed-- there can be no winners here.) If you choose to boycott every pharmacy chain where mistakes in dispensing medication have been made, I doubt that you will be left with anything, at all.

[happy_terd]

If that is the case then BP didnt spill all that oil.

[LCF]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Wal-Mart is not a conscious creature. "Wal-Mart" didn't do that to her son-- one pharmacist working at one Wal-Mart location made an error-- which can and does happen at pharmacies all over the country (and the world.) wrong One person's careless (not malicious) mistake destroyed her son's life-- not a company. (And as this drags on, it is likely that one person will have his/her life destroyed-- there can be no winners here.) If you choose to boycott every pharmacy chain where mistakes in dispensing medication have been made, I doubt that you will be left with anything, at all.

this is hardly a logical argument in the case. The fact that something is wrong *everywhere* doesn't make it right or something you have to live with.
Using prepackaged medicines eliminates 99,x% of such cases (rare as they are) But it costs more and calls for restructuring the whole pharmacy infrastructure, so it is unlikely to happen, unless the people who call the shots can be made to see the problem.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by LCF

this is hardly a logical argument in the case. The fact that something is wrong *everywhere* doesn't make it right or something you have to live with.

I never said that it was "something you have to live with." What I'm saying is that boycotting every location for a major chain store based on the mistake of one person at one location is to use your term "hardly a logical argument." Collective blame and "punishment" for the faults of a minority or an individual is dumb. There has been no mention of Wal-Mart being told of this-- there is no mention of Wal-Mart acting unsympathetically about this. This happened far too recently for any judgment to be made on "how Wal-Mart is treating her." What I'm saying is that you are going to boycott a drug chain because a pharmacist at one location made an error in dispensing medication-- you are going to be boycotting every drug chain. You will have literally nowhere to turn for medication if you need it. Sure, he has every right to stop shopping at Wal-Mart over this-- but that in no way makes it any less of a knee-jerk reaction.

But it cost more

And this is the magic statement-- people don't go to Wal-Mart's pharmacy because it is the best, or the most fully stocked-- people go to Wal-Mart's pharmacy because it is cheap. If anyone tried to implement a solution that results in more costs going to the consumer, the consumer will scream bloody murder and look elsewhere for their medicine.

[happy_terd]

It does not matter what you think.

A company is 100% legally responsible for its employees actions while on the job.

-------------


lol.

I think that you could use that same argument to justify not blaming BP for the oil spill disaster.

[Joebill]

As for determining what he would get...

I have been on one jury where we had to decide that. Basically, knee injury on an oil platform. Cannot lift anything over 25 pounds for the rest of his life. He was 25 years old when it happened.

So, we made an educated guess on what the harmed person's earning potential was based on his current job skills, education, etc. current at the time of the trial.

Our award was reduced by the judge.

The judge told us he would get money counseling, and while he wouldn't be rich, he would be able to provide himself food shelter and transporation for the rest of his life. Almost 15 years ago.

From my chatting with other people over the years, that is basically how such judgements happen if the person suing the company wins.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I never said that it was "something you have to live with." What I'm saying is that boycotting every location for a major chain store based on the mistake of one person at one location is to use your term "hardly a logical argument." Collective blame and "punishment" for the faults of a minority or an individual is dumb. There has been no mention of Wal-Mart being told of this-- there is no mention of Wal-Mart acting unsympathetically about this. This happened far too recently for any judgment to be made on "how Wal-Mart is treating her." What I'm saying is that you are going to boycott a drug chain because a pharmacist at one location made an error in dispensing medication-- you are going to be boycotting every drug chain. You will have literally nowhere to turn for medication if you need it. Sure, he has every right to stop shopping at Wal-Mart over this-- but that in no way makes it any less of a knee-jerk reaction.

argeedee, I have to agree with you. Tragic though cases like this are, they are down to human error by an individual, and not a sinister conspiracy by a faceless corporate giant. To "boycott" the person's employer does seem to be a little pointless.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Joebill

As for determining what he would get...

I have been on one jury where we had to decide that. Basically, knee injury on an oil platform. Cannot lift anything over 25 pounds for the rest of his life. He was 25 years old when it happened.

So, we made an educated guess on what the harmed person's earning potential was based on his current job skills, education, etc. current at the time of the trial.

Our award was reduced by the judge.

The judge told us he would get money counseling, and while he wouldn't be rich, he would be able to provide himself food shelter and transporation for the rest of his life. Almost 15 years ago.

From my chatting with other people over the years, that is basically how such judgements happen if the person suing the company wins.

Joe,

This is the kind of thing I don't understand. Although it's very unfortunate if a person can't lift anything over 25lbs for the rest of his life, why does it stop him from getting a job that doesn't involve doing so? There are lots of jobs around that don't involve lifting. Something like this is very different to a brain injury, where the person perhaps sadly cannot do any kind of work, and needs life-long financial support.

With the best will in the world, accidents do happen, and while appropriate compensation for the accident is obviously completely justified, should someone be financially supported for the rest of his life if he is still capable of doing other types of work?

[Laz116]

I get that it's easy to blame the big corp.

But have we lost all personal responsibility. What happened to actually reading the label of the med we are putting into our mouths?

[LCF]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I never said that it was "something you have to live with." What I'm saying is that boycotting every location for a major chain store based on the mistake of one person at one location is to use your term "hardly a logical argument." Collective blame and "punishment" for the faults of a minority or an individual is dumb. There has been no mention of Wal-Mart being told of this-- there is no mention of Wal-Mart acting unsympathetically about this. This happened far too recently for any judgment to be made on "how Wal-Mart is treating her." What I'm saying is that you are going to boycott a drug chain because a pharmacist at one location made an error in dispensing medication-- you are going to be boycotting every drug chain. You will have literally nowhere to turn for medication if you need it. Sure, he has every right to stop shopping at Wal-Mart over this-- but that in no way makes it any less of a knee-jerk reaction.



And this is the magic statement-- people don't go to Wal-Mart's pharmacy because it is the best, or the most fully stocked-- people go to Wal-Mart's pharmacy because it is cheap. If anyone tried to implement a solution that results in more costs going to the consumer, the consumer will scream bloody murder and look elsewhere for their medicine.

It's always someones mistake. But such mistakes should be eliminated, and in most cases firing the one who did the mistake doesn't work. We're not computers, we are humans and as such there is always the possibility for mistake. It's left to the drug-delivery-chain to reduce your chance of making a mistake.

Having huge chains of pharmacies reduces the price of the meds, especially if there are no standard retail packages. The question is, is the low cost worth these 0,0x % of people who will get damaged/killed by the system? For the 99,9(10-x) % probably. This is a very tough question, resolved differently in the different countries. Here, in Germany, such case is more or less unthinkable. But the whole health system is very different too.

[LCF]

Originally Posted by Laz116

I get that it's easy to blame the big corp.

But have we lost all personal responsibility. What happened to actually reading the label of the med we are putting into our mouths?

If I got it correct, the label on the front was saying X, but inside was Y.

Btw, can't people contact wall mart first, and then sue them? It sounds like a more reasonable approach for the problem.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by LCF

The question is, is the low cost worth these 0,0x % of people who will get damaged/killed by the system? For the 99,9(10-x) % probably.

Googling a bit to try to put numbers on those percentages...

"According to Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions, U.S. outpatient pharmacies filled 3.9 billion prescriptions in 2009. Of those, 325,000 were serious enough to cause potential harm to patients due to the fact they were filled incorrectly with the wrong drug."

So, on the one hand, 325,000 sounds like (and is) a pretty big number, it is also 0.008%, or one in 12,000, so 99.992% of them are either correct or not "serious enough to cause potential harm to patients." Put another way, somewhere in the US an average of 890 times a day, someone is given the wrong medication that has the potential to cause them harm. (Wherther you want to think in the "very small percentage" or the "thousands of times a day" mindset depends, I suppose, on if you are the "glass half empty" or "glass half full" type.)

Total number of annual mistakes (including both the deadly ones and the less serious) is around 5 million per year-- one out of every 780 perscriptions or 0.12%. Or-- around 13,700 times per day somewhere in the US someone is getting the wrong medication-- roughly once every 6 seconds.

Numbers taken from here:

http://www.accessrx.com/blog/current...ause-problems/

[LCF]

Thanks for the real data. Statistics can be scary sometimes...

[JLYates]

All pharmacy's make mistakes, all businesses make mistakes, there is only one person who is perfect. I can and did overlook the time that WalMart gave me someone else medications. It happens, they hear the name wrong and hand you someone elses meds. They put someone elses pills in the bag with my name on it. I got Suie Q's meds. It has her name and so I knew they were the wrong ones. Okay, not happy, but again, mistakes can be made. I can check to see if the meds are the ones I am supposed to get.

What I can not accept is that the assistant doesn't take the time to make sure the medication in that pill bottle is the correct one. They are risking a person's life and the excuse that it happens all the time isn't an excuse that is acceptable. Take that extra five seconds to check.
I trust my doctor to make a correct diagnosis based on the information that I give him. If it is wrong because I forgot to tell him something, that is my fault, not his.

No, at present we have not contacted them. Reason: Several lawyers have told us that it will give them the inside edge to fight us, to build a case that it is our fault. We should have checked the labels, we should have done this or done that. I have heard various suggestions on who to contact, where we can get help and I am going to check them out.

In some ways it is unfair to blame WalMart -- except for this one aspect. WalMart hires the employees who work in the pharmacy's. They decide how many assistants there will be at a given time. They decide on training.
So, in that aspect, they are also to "blame". Drugs that are different but in the same packets SHOULD NOT BE BESIDE EACH OTHER. That is an assumption on my part, but deduction is the only reason as to why the assistant grabed the wrong packet.
Both are the same shade of blue, both are shaped the same. They both have the first three letters, and the last couple of letters. Too much similarity created the potential for this to have happened.
If your going to place the drugs in alphabetical order (which is reasonable to be done), then place a note beside the boxes of drugs that are similar; check and make sure you have the right med. Before you slap that label on the paket, chek to make sure it is the correct one. Five seconds to filp it over, look at the whole name and go, yep, they match.

How many of us, when we get home with a medication, get online to make sure we are given the right drug, espcially when it is a drug that you have taken for 10 years? New drug, yes, I will check it out.
It is the right color, right size, right packet shape and design, right label, so, it is the right drug, take it. If it had been in a pill bottle, not the packet, we probably not even have known that he was on the wrong drug.
I get a script and the pill is totally different, I calll to find out what is going on. Change companies, different design but same med. Okay, no problem, take the med.

When you go to get new brake shoes on your car, do you crawl underneath it to see if they were put on, and put on correctly? Or electrical power goes out in your house and you find out it on the electric companies side, do you climb up the pole to make sure it was hooked up right? No you do not. So why should I have to check to see that the medications, that I TRUST my pharmacy to fill correctly, are the right pills?

Every pharmacy has at one time or another had lawsuits on giving the wrong meds that caused harm to somone. WalMart is not the only one.

Do we shop at WalMart any more? Not unless we have no choice. There are five in my area, and the closest Target is a 45 minute drive. It is a small store and has only half the items that we can get at WM. Our meds are filled at CVS and they have on the bottle the desription of what the pill should look like. Color, size and shape so we know it is the correct drug.
We now have to drive to three different stores to get all the items we could at WalMart. That is our choice. I am not asking others to do this. What I do want others to do is let their pharmacist, no matter what store, that they want them to make doubly sure that the drug they are giving you are the correct ones. Double check the container when they get the pills out before they but them in the bottle.

Thanks for the help and support. I will let eveyone knows what happens when it does happen.

I had called over 20 lawyers, and Frid four of them called back, three said no way, give it up. One, the third one said he would check it out, he was't afraid of WalMart, has went up aganst them and won.He is not expecting us to do the leg work, he will contact the different doctors Josh has seen and get info from them. Nothing may come of it, but at least he didn't right off the bat say no, won't go against WM.

Janette

[carld]

Sadly, Wal-mart is well known for playing serious hardball with lawsuits.

My Dr. once wrote a prescription for a $12 tube of capsaicin (hot pepper cream) for my shoulder. The pharmacist filled it with some suppository that was weight for weight more expensive than gold, I didn't figure this out till much later. No harm done except to my wallet (and no it didn't help my shoulder at all).

Good luck Janette.