Walgreens Ordered to Pay $21 Million

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Aug 12, 2004 12:16PM

A jury in Cook Country has ordered Walgreens to pay $21 million to the family of Alexandra Gehrke, age 6, for accidentally giving her the wrong medication. Alexandra was born prematurely in 1998 and cannot walk, talk, or feed herself. In 2001, Walgreens admitted they made a mistake, but at trial they argued that Alexandra's injuries were a result of her premature birth. Alexandra's parents blamed the injuries on the drug mix up. Most of the money awarded to the family will be used for the future care of Alexandra.

The incident happened 5 years ago. Alexandra's mother said they had to rush her baby to the emergency room 5 times in 2 months after the Walgreens pharmacy filled a prescription with adult diabetes medication instead of the anti-seizure medication that the baby's doctor had prescribed. Each time Alexandra was taken in to the ER with low-blood sugar or seizures. Each time the doctors saved her but couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Like most states, IL doesn't require pharmacies to report errors. The Chicago Patient Safety Forum is set to meet next month to discuss the state's policies on this. Researchers estimate that 1.7% of prescriptions (51 million annually) contain some type of error and that 3 million of those errors could potentially serious harm patients. One of the reasons mistakes are made are because drugs are similarly named. Chicagoist thinks that maybe another reason is because every doctor we've ever had has the illegible writing.

Chicagoist trusts the actual Walgreens pharmacist, for the most part, but sometimes it's hard to get past the lackey workers to actually speak to the pharmacist. And the service we've experienced there has been better than service at other drugstores.. ahem.. CVS. But then again, we take the same drugs every month so we know what they look like. It's scary because you pretty much would never know if you got a new prescription and were given the wrong drug.