Mayo Doctors and Pharmacists prepare Medical Card holders for Over Dosing - By Declan O' Toole

                                                                                                                                                                

Gerard Howlin of the Irish Pharmacist Union says “our members are frustrated by the fact that there is a problem around medicines being wasted and we believe that this is costing the taxpayer millions every year.”

This claim was in response to a matter brought to their attention where by an elderly patient of Castlebar General Hospital was prescribed drugs on the Medical Card scheme, far in excess of what he needed, sometimes on a daily basis. 

The patient would attend the hospital for day treatment and prescribed medicines that were to be consumed over the following week. The prescription would be collected from their local pharmacy the same evening.

The very next day, the patient would return to Castlebar General and be issued with the same prescription, along with several other items. The Patient would once again return to the pharmacy with his new prescription, only to be re-issued the drugs he had received not 24 hours previous, along with the newly prescribed medicine. 

On the next day the patient would attend the Hospital and receive another prescription, requesting the same medication as the two previous days, along with several more. Yet again when the prescription was brought before the pharmacist the patient would receive copious amounts of the same medication he had been issued with, in the days previous.

The patient’s family claim “we made both the pharmacist and hospital aware of the amounts of medication we were receiving, but our efforts fell on deaf ears”.

This issue was brought to the attention of a pharmaceutical scientist, who examined the various different medication prescribed to the Medical Card holder and found that not only was he completely over prescribed medication but that much of the drugs on his prescription were in fact the same tablet, but manufactured by different medical companies.

It was found that in one instance the patient required two tablespoons of a particular medicine but was instead was issued with three litres of it. 

After the patient passed away, the members of his family returned to the pharmacist, two plastic bags full to the brim of prescribed drugs with an estimated value of between €2500-€3000.

In a statement from the IPU they said, “The Irish Pharmacy Union has made proposals to the Department of Health and Children and the HSE to tackle the issue. This includes the introduction of medicine use reviews, where the pharmacist would carry out a consultation with a patient who was on a number of medicines and review all of the medication they had been prescribed and how the patient was managing the medicines. We believe that this would promote not only the more efficient use of medicines and that it would also lead better outcomes for patients. However, these proposals have not been implemented.”

A spokesman for the Irish Patients Association said, "These allegations are very serious patient safety issues that require investigation into how there was duplication of prescriptions. Investigation within the hospital as to how the patients records were referred to before the doctor re-prescribed the medications, investigation by perhaps the Pharmaceutical Society Ireland, the pharmacy regulator, as to how such quantities were dispensed with a day or two in the first place and finally the H.S.E. should set up a process to investigate large quantity of returns by patients or their family.”

The HSE declined to make a formal comment on the matter, but did say however, that any such activity was wrong and merits a full investigation.