Is it necessary for us to have some pharmacist-insurance?

[pharmkelly]

I heard someone here mentioned insurance for pharmacist practice kinda thing.
Is it necessary for us to have it?

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[RxWildcat]

Its not required but it is relatively cheap and HIGHLY recommended. Your company coverage is somewhat limited and personal insurance is a good thing to have

 

[Hels2007]

As an intern, you probably don't need one, as a pharmacist, if you work in any field that involves patient care it's better to have it. It's only about $100-150 a year. You never know if you will need it...

 

[Old Timer]

Just so you know, it's actually worthless. Others will disagree. Especially if you work for a large corporation. The insurance you buy is ALWAYS secondary to your employers insurance. If you work for CVS or Walgreens they would only pay after you bankrupted your employer.

It's like a security blanket. It's not expensive and if it makes you feel better, buy it....

 

[genesis09]

As long as you work for another company or hospital, it is very inexpensive. It does get expensive if you are doing consulting or run your own pharmacy.

 

[nnguyenc]

the insurance for pharmacy student is like $25/year

i mean if you want to play it cheap or think it's worthless,
then don't kick yourself when you need it

 

[ethyl]

If your company found that you didn't follow their policy somehow, would your private insurance pay for everything or would they deny you services as well?
I talked to a pharmacist who had broken store policy (and state and federal laws) and basically got no help from his company, but almost all of his legal fees and other expenses were paid by his insurance.

 

[slimcutt]

Just so you know, it's actually worthless. Others will disagree. Especially if you work for a large corporation. The insurance you buy is ALWAYS secondary to your employers insurance. If you work for CVS or Walgreens they would only pay after you bankrupted your employer.

It's like a security blanket. It's not expensive and if it makes you feel better, buy it....

What happens if your employer sues you?

 

[Old Timer]

What happens if your employer sues you?

What would your employer sue you for?

 

[RxWildcat]

badmouthing the drivethru?

 

[Hels2007]

Just so you know, it's actually worthless. Others will disagree. Especially if you work for a large corporation. The insurance you buy is ALWAYS secondary to your employers insurance. If you work for CVS or Walgreens they would only pay after you bankrupted your employer.

It's like a security blanket. It's not expensive and if it makes you feel better, buy it....

Naive. If your employer finds you to be negligent, you are on your own and you will not be covered by the employer-provided insurance.

 

[Old Timer]

Naive. If your employer finds you to be negligent, you are on your own and you will not be covered by the employer-provided insurance.

You have no understanding of reality. Why would anyone sue Joe Blo, PharmD and let of mega bucks corporation off the hook? They sue everyone. They employed you, they are responsible for your actions. If you are soooooo negligent that mega bucks corporation can prove to a jury they are not responsible and the jury finds as a matter of fact that you are negligent, your insurance will not cover you either.

 

[confettiflyer]

You have no understanding of reality. Why would anyone sue Joe Blo, PharmD and let of mega bucks corporation off the hook? They sue everyone. They employed you, they are responsible for your actions. If you are soooooo negligent that mega bucks corporation can prove to a jury they are not responsible and the jury finds as a matter of fact that you are negligent, your insurance will not cover you either.

OldTimer is correct, Hels2007 is incorrect.

Under respondeat superior, so long as the act in question occurred within the scope of employment, the company is liable for the actions of the employee. You don't even have to be an employee of a company to hold it responsible for a questionable act.

If your employer finds you to be negligent,

The problem with the above statement is that... employers can find employees to be negligent, but it holds no bearing since your employer is not a court of law. Whether or not you were criminally negligent is beside the point. Heck, you could have been convicted for 1st degree murder for, say, lacing vicodin with cyanide to your least favorite pt. Your employer is still responsible since it was done within the scope of the employee/employer relationship.

But at this point...OldTimer is right, you are probably beyond the scope of private insurance anyway, seeing as you'll be sitting in prison for 25 to life in the above example. This is why pharmacist insurance is so cheap.

 

[Hels2007]

You have no understanding of reality.

And you see world in black and white, which it isn't.

Why would anyone sue Joe Blo, PharmD and let of mega bucks corporation off the hook? They sue everyone.

They can TRY to sue everyone, but they it depends on which case is found to be substantial and may proceed. Another point is that employer may later collect the costs of defending itself from the pharmacist (or the pharmacist's policy). And verdicts often go against one of the parties involved, not both. Who is more likely to get nailed? The company which can show an obscure policy it has in place that the pharmacist violated in the process of making the error leading to the lawsuit, and which has good lawyers interested in saving their hides, or the pharmacist who is so easy to turn into the sacrificial scapegoat? It happened more than once and sure will happen more than once.

They employed you, they are responsible for your actions.

I am sorry, are we talking about kindergartners or licensed healthcare professionals? They are responsible for providing SOPs, but you are responsible for following them.

If you are soooooo negligent that mega bucks corporation can prove to a jury they are not responsible and the jury finds as a matter of fact that you are negligent, your insurance will not cover you either

Especially not the world of law, where the devil is in the details. "Negligence" is not always showing up to work wasted and filling a kid's cough syrup with methadone instead.

If it weren't almost 2am here, I would have done a quick and dirty search for some liability cases. There was a good one a couple years back...

 

[confettiflyer]

I am sorry, are we talking about kindergartners or licensed healthcare professionals? They are responsible for providing SOPs, but you are responsible for following them.

If I remember right, an employee not following SOP does not result in an automatic release of liability by the employing company. The employee has to make a physical departure from his or her duties (in addition to acting against SOP) to be considered released from liability.

 

[Pharmavixen]

Where I live (the province of Ontario), pharmacists are required to buy $2 million in liability insurance annually in order renew our licenses.

What I'm curious enough is how often does this come up? I've known pharmacists who have been disciplined by the College for professional misconduct related to mistakes, but I haven't heard of anybody being sued.

 

[Old Timer]

1) I know of no case where a major drug chain or hospital tried to collect from an employee.

2) Some things are in law are black and white. If you committed such an egregious action that your employer would attempt to collect from you, your insurance would not cover you.

3) This insurance was designed before the majors dominated the market. When you worked for a mom and pop operation or a small chain and the victim could potentially exceed the insurance limits of the employer. This is impossible when working for Walgreens (40 billion dollar company) or CVS (80 billion dollar company).

But it's America, it's a free country. You can buy it if you wish or if it gives you peace of mind, it's certainly cheap enough and Pharmacists make a fortune so it's not like you'll have to decide between paying for the insurance and feeding your family.

 

[confettiflyer]

Not to mention that you can argue it to be an ordinary and necessary expense and write it off on your taxes.

 

[Old Timer]

Not to mention that you can argue it to be an ordinary and necessary expense and write it off on your taxes.

That no longer happens as it falls under the misc deduction and you only get the excess of 2% of your adjusted gross income.

AGI=100,000.00

You need to exceed 2,000.00 to get a deduction and it's only on the excess. That's a lot of journal subscriptions, CE fees, lab coats and insurance premiums....

 

[Caverject]

3) This insurance was designed before the majors dominated the market. When you worked for a mom and pop operation or a small chain and the victim could potentially exceed the insurance limits of the employer. This is impossible when working for Walgreens (40 billion dollar company) or CVS (80 billion dollar company).

Good job! You just HAD to get that CVS/Walgreens dig in, huh?

Old Timer is correct in that there are no published cases or reports of a pharmacy chain declaring they are not responsible for their pharmacist's actions, or at least from what I can find. If you look at the insurance policy that APhA offers it's members (yeah, thru a 3rd party), it's a raw deal and completely useless.

Also, there is no way any decent, if not idiotic, trial lawyer that would sue the pharmacist specifically and not the company. Pharmacists like us do not have any money worth suing for in a case like that. (Unless you're that corporate plane, left coast educated Epic whom isn't included in this category!) For us younger people, our money is locked up in student loan debt or mortgage loans. For the older pharmacists like Old Timer, they typically have most debts paid off but they are not incredibly wealthy or rich.

 

[confettiflyer]

That no longer happens as it falls under the misc deduction and you only get the excess of 2% of your adjusted gross income.

AGI=100,000.00

You need to exceed 2,000.00 to get a deduction and it's only on the excess. That's a lot of journal subscriptions, CE fees, lab coats and insurance premiums....

Hey, some of us buy lab coats like some women buy expensive shoes.

Juust kidding, I forgot how cheap pharmacy liability insurance was, even though I mentioned it a few posts earlier.

So I guess the trick is to go bananas in one year and rack up all your CE fees, custom lab coat orders, etc...

 

[pezdispenser]

I was just reading this case study. I wonder whether the employer's insurance covered everything or the pharmacist's personal insurance came into play?

Glipizide Dispensed Instead of Allopurinol - Plaintiff Claims Pharmacist Had Been Stealing Controlled Drugs From Pharmacy for Years and that Hypoglycemia From Glipizide Led to Renal Failure, Stroke and Death - $31.3 Million Verdict Includes $25 Milli

The plaintiff's decedent, age seventy-seven, brought a prescription for Allopurinol (prescribed for gout) to a Walgreen's pharmacy. The pharmacy manager, the defendant, erroneously dispensed Glipizide, an anti-diabetes medication used to lower blood sugar, in a bottle labeled as Allopurinol. After ingesting Glipizide for two days the decedent became hypoglycemic, suffered a diabetic coma and was hospitalized with acute renal failure. He had suffered from minor chronic renal failure prior to the Glipizide ingestion, but had never been in severe renal failure.

The plaintiff claimed that the acute hypoglycemia was the cause of the development of acute severe renal failure. The decedent was placed on permanent dialysis and was unable to resume his regular activities.

A few months later, the decedent suffered a stroke which was caused by the dialysis, after which he required twenty-four hour care and a feeding tube for the rest of his life. He also suffered episodes of aspiration pneumonia and died from end stage renal disease 18 months later.

The plaintiff claimed that the defendant had been stealing for his own consumption at least eight or nine doses of narcotic controlled substances a day from the pharmacy for a period of 8 years. When he was caught, the defendant admitted to the theft and consumption of more than 86,000 doses over an eight-year period. The plaintiff claimed that Walgreens failed to detect the thefts prior to the date of the error with the decedent's prescription, which was a violation of federal regulations in regards to controlled substances. The defendants admitted negligence in misfilling the prescription and admitted that some injury was caused, but claimed he only sustained transient hypoglycemia and denied that the renal failure, dialysis, stroke and death were related.

According to a report, a $31,351,107 verdict was returned against both defendants, which included $25 million in punitive damages against Walgreens. The jury specifically found that the defendant being under the influence of controlled substances at the time the prescription was filled was a proximate cause of the prescription error. Post-trial motions were pending.

With permission from Medical Malpractice Verdicts, Settlements & Experts; Lewis Laska, Editor, 901 Church St., Nashville, TN 37203-3411, 1-800-298-6288.

 

[speednutsII]

I heard someone here mentioned insurance for pharmacist practice kinda thing.
Is it necessary for us to have it?

YES, even as an intern. UB requires interns to have a policy. It's 35 bucks a year with 3 million dollar coverage. GET IT.