@joefromchicago,
Sounds like a case of doctors being able to afford better lobbyists.
I am a pharmacy technician myself and I feel the system should be made a lot better to ensure there will be no(or less) mistakes made.
The average pharmacy fills roughly 300 to 400 prescriptions per day. Unfortunately, there is bound to be at least one mistake made.
It's like an assembly line.
*Inputer - The pharmacy technician who puts in all of the information on the script - name, D.O.B., drug, drug strength, directions, refills, doctor, day supply, insurance, dates, and so on
*Production - The pharmacy technician who prints the labels, counts the pills and labels the medicine
*Pharmacist - The end of the assembley line. His job is to check the prescription to make sure it is correct and there is no drug interactions(The prescription hard copy is on their screen when they check every prescription). And if he catches a mistake which happens often, it goes all the way to the beginning of the assembley line for the inputer to fix. Some pharmacists are better than others at catching these mistakes or interactions. Bottom line, it's the pharmacists job to verify everything is correct.
A better system must be made to ensure there are no mistakes. Being a pharmacy technician myself, there is a lot of pressure to be quick and efficiant - and they don't always go hand in hand.
The pharmacy system need to be more user friendly and FORCE the inputer and the pharmacist to double check their work. The way it works now is the inputer inputs all the information and THEN scans the hardcopy into the computer system. I believe it should be scanned in first to compare everything right on the screen.
It's a very tough job to be in sometimes and must be taken very very seriously.
I don't know what pharmacy that guy worked at that had jail time but I don't know of any pharmacy that mixes chemotherapy drugs other that hospitals. If we recieved a prescription for that type of mixture we would probably tell them to go to a hopsital pharmacy.
From what I hear, Walgreens pharmacy has the best system. I work at CVS and we just got a new system. For being such a large company, they should have invested in something better. I could think of a million ways to improve it.
