Sam's Club Pharmacy Unauthorized Prescription Change Endangers Customer Ontario, California

Just some advice...

I don't care what the relationship is between you and Laurie or whether she was sitting next to you telling you exactly what to say as you typed this report, it's not good practice to post someone else's private medical information in a public forum such as this.

There are many ways to get your point across without going into those types of details.

Regarding this accidental/negligent change in dosage. Couple of questions...

1. Did the directions on the bottle indicate that the dosage was 300mg and should only be taken once per day?

If so, though Sam's may have switched the drug like you said, it's Laurie's fault for double dosing and not bothering to read the bottle. You'll have a hard time with that aspect of the complaint and it would be better to leave the focus on why they switched the drug and whether they had/needed proper authorization to do so. You'll never get anything/anywhere if the bottle was properly labled and the directions were clear. Just an FYI. You'll make more progress keeping focus on the change in meds.

2. Why didn't her PCP notice she was going through so much medication?

By your post, Laurie went through 6 months of meds in 3 months. Over those three months, her prescription surely would have run out at some point and a refill would have been needed, especially if she were taking twice as much as the prescribed dose. I don't believe it's common practice to prescribe meds 6 months out and even if this was done, then the refill intervals would be 30 or 60 days. By my math, that means at least one refill was given and it was given months earlier than it should have been scheduled.

They had a script for all the refills, right? I can't imagine they'd give a refill that wasn't scheduled for another 3 months, so I have wonder why the issue wasn't noticed sooner. This could be another fault of Sam's or, it may indicate that her PCP had to authorize a refill at some point and missed the fact she was double dosing. If his office wrote a refill or authorized an early refill, then he should have caught on and questioned why she went through her script so fast.

Maybe you should be looking to bring a complaint against Dr. Hagglov as well. Missing something like that would make him liable, wouldn't it? Heck, not to get all paranoid, but something like that might even justify his office 'forgetting' a call from the pharmacy for authorization. I'd take a hard look at the refill schedule and when they were made.

Hope it all works out.