Shopper Claims CVS Pharmacist Gave Her the Wrong Medicine: "I Couldn't Move."
But the drugstore chain is denying that there was a prescription mix-up.
Many of us have to run to CVS every four weeks to get our monthly medication refill—and after a while, it becomes fairly routine. By now, you may not even be double-checking your prescription to make sure you have the right number of pills in the bottle—or the right medicine at all. It's always a good idea to be certain, however, as one shopper claims she recently learned the hard way after being given the wrong prescription by a CVS pharmacist. Read on to learn more about this alleged medicine mix-up.
READ THIS NEXT: CVS Accused of "Intentionally Lying" to Customers About Their Prescriptions.
A shopper claims she was given the wrong medicine by a CVS pharmacist.
A woman from Angleton, Texas, is claiming that she was given the wrong medication at her local CVS pharmacy, NBC-affiliate KPRC 2 in Houston reported on May 23.
Requesting to remain anonymous, she told the news outlet that she was in the store's drive-thru with her son to get two prescriptions. While waiting for the pharmacist to get the second one, she asked her son to grab her a pill from the first prescription.
"He placed it on the console of my vehicle and I proceeded to tell him to go ahead and give me one because I needed to take it," the woman told KPRC 2. "He just handed it to me, and I just popped it into my mouth and didn't think anything of it. But once I got down the road, that's when I looked down and realized it didn't look anything like what I have at home."
She says the pill caused her to go stiff.
"I entrusted my pharmacy to give me the correct medication," the woman told KRPC 2. "I feel that they're professionals and this is what they're supposed to do."
When she returned to the location to tell the pharmacist she was given the wrong prescription and had taken one of the pills, she claimed that he did not seem alarmed by the mix-up, which lessened her worries. But about half an hour later, she said her body started to negatively react to what she had taken.
"I was just like rigid stiff from the interaction that the medication they gave me with other medication that I take," she told KRPC 2. "I became stiff and couldn't move for several hours. It was horrifying. A horrifying feeling to feel that I couldn't call for help. I was all alone. I felt like I was going to die here alone. This is what happened. And no one was going to know how or why."
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CVS has denied any wrongdoing in the situation.
Best Life reached out to CVS about this situation, and we will update this story with their response. In a statement to KRPC 2, a spokesperson for the company denied the woman's claims that she was given the wrong medication.
"Based on our investigation of this alleged incident that occurred over a year ago in April 2022, prescriptions for both of the medications you list below were written for [her] and our pharmacy filled them correctly," CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis told the news outlet.
For her part, the woman shared a document with KRPC 2 that showed a financial settlement offer of $5,000 from CVS to her for her to "not disclose" the situation to anyone else. DeAngelis did not deny that CVS offered her a financial settlement, according to the news outlet.
"In the interest of customer service, we engaged with our patient in response to her request for compensation," he told KRPC 2.
But the woman said she did not sign the settlement, which would not have been an admission of error on the CVS' part.
"I felt a duty to speak out for others to be aware of what they're picking up from their pharmacy," the woman explained. "This is life concerning. I thought, 'Oh well, I can't get an attorney and I could've taken the offer, but what good would that do for the next person who gets the wrong medication?' It's a matter of safety, not money."
This is not the first alleged medication mix-up.
Like all major pharmacy chains, CVS has found itself in the hot seat over alleged medication mix-ups in the past.
Back in 2019, a man from Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit against CVS, claiming the pharmacy "negligently filled" his prescription at least twice with the wrong medicine, according to the Clarion Ledger.
Then, in 2020, CVS paid a penalty of $125,000 to the state of Oklahoma after regulators fined and cited the company for dangerous prescription errors, The New York Times reported.
Most recently, a different woman called out the pharmacy over an alleged medicine mistake. Earlier this month, 51-year-old Gradine Hector-Faison told CBS-affiliate WANF in Atlanta that she had picked up what she thought was oxycodone, which she had been prescribed for a bad ankle sprain, from her local CVS.
After her pain did not lessen, she said she called her daughter-in-law, who allegedly discovered that Hector-Faison had been given Adderall instead.
"I'm frustrated, I'm upset, I'm in pain," Hector-Faison told WANF. "I just want what belongs to me. I want to ease my pain up. I want CVS to make it right. I want them to apologize for giving me the wrong medicine."
