JB, my favourite drug dealer, sent me this warning. From the looks of things, the expected incremental benefits of checking your prescriptions would outweigh the expected incremental costs. And it might even be worth paying a bit more in time or money to avoid the really busy and rushed pharmacies.
Medication errors — wrong drug, incorrect dose or improper use — harm at least 1.5 million people every year, according to the Institute of Medicine. Confusion caused by drugs with similar names accounts for up to 25 percent of the reported errors. ...
More than 3 billion prescriptions are filled each year, and the number keeps growing. Errors can be made all along the route from prescribing to dispensing.
A doctor’s illegible writing is misread. A bad phone connection makes a called-in prescription unclear. A busy pharmacy worker grabs the wrong pills off a shelf where inventory is kept in alphabetical order. ...
Horn said that most of the errors he encounters occur where prescription volumes are high, in large chain drugstores and pharmacies at big-box stores.
“Everybody’s in a hurry. Everybody’s under a burden,” he said.