Kentucky Wrongful Death Lawsuit Claims Birth Control Prescription Error

Every year, 700,000 people are rushed to emergency rooms and 120,000 are hospitalized because of prescription drug errors in Kentucky and nationally.

Many of these victims will die.

The family of a 16-year-old girl who died from an alleged negligent prescription of birth control pills has sued the Stanford medical clinic where the pills were prescribed.

The lawsuit was filed in Lincoln Circuit Court in April, according to Central Kentucky News. In addition to the clinic, a doctor and nurse who work there were also named as defendants.

The Garrard County teenager allegedly had a history of chest pains and blood clots when she went to the clinic in January 2012, the news source says. She was treated by the doctor and nurse and given a prescription for oral contraceptive pills.

In March 2012, she returned to the clinic complaining of complications from the pills, but the prescription was not cancelled.

She died on March 29, 2012, from a massive pulmonary embolism “as a result of defendants prescribing oral contraceptive pills,” the lawsuit alleges. The family contends the clinic should have made sure the pills were appropriate for their daughter and would not cause complications.

Six Facts About Prescription Drug Mistakes In Kentucky

When a prescribed medication has an unwanted – and perhaps fatal – consequence, health officials call it an Adverse Drug Event (ADE).

ADEs are a serious public health problem.

Here are some prescription drug facts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

1. 82 percent of American adults take at least one medication.
2. 29 percent take five or more prescription drugs.
3. $3.5 billion is spent on extra medical costs of ADEs annually.
4. At least 40 percent of costs of ambulatory (non-hospital settings) ADEs are believed to be preventable.
5. As many as 7,400 hospital patients die each year from medication errors alone, according to the Institute of Medicine.
6. A qualified Kentucky medical malpractice attorney can explain your legal rights if you have experienced an Adverse Drug Event.

Sources:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  http://www.cdc.gov/medicationsafety/basics.html
• Central Kentucky News
  http://articles.centralkynews.com/2013-04-12/amnews/38499137_1_pills-alleged-negligence-lawsuit
• U.S. National Library of Medicine – National Institutes of Health: “Estimating Hospital Deaths Due To Medical Errors”
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11466119