Pharmacy Fails To Provide Services Of An Appropriate Standard To Consumers 21HDC00641

Health and Disability Commissioner has found a busy
supermarket pharmacy in breach of the Code of Health and
Disability Services Consumers’ Rights (the
Code).

Morag McDowell found Countdown Pharmacy Bayfair
in breach of Right 4(1) of the Code – the right for
consumers to have services provided with reasonable care and
skill.

An initial complaint involved dispensing errors
made to three consumers. However, a subsequent
Commissioner-initiated investigation uncovered further
errors involving a number of consumers from
2019-2020.

Ms McDowell says, “I consider Countdown
Pharmacy Bayfair failed to provide services to multiple
consumers with reasonable care and skill and breached the
Code.”

Ms McDowell noted concerns about the systems in
place at the pharmacy at the time of the dispensing errors.
There was a lack of staff oversight and support, staffing
levels were inadequate and a lack of monitoring to detect
errors resulted in a failure to take timely action.

“A
pharmacy is required to ensure the provision of services
that are safe and appropriate. This includes providing
adequate support and oversight to staff to enable them to
provide safe and accurate dispensing,” Ms McDowell
said.

She also found the pharmacist employed during
the complaint period in breach of right 4(1) of the Code,
although she acknowledged that systemic and mitigating
factors influenced the pharmacist’s practice.

“The
pharmacist had a professional responsibility to ensure the
services she provided were of an appropriate standard,” Ms
McDowell said. “By failing to ensure she performed final
checks adequately, and making dispensing errors, the
pharmacist failed to provide services to multiple consumers
with reasonable care and skill and this breached the
Code.”

Affected consumers have already received
apologies, so no further apologies were recommended by Ms
McDowell. However, she made a number of other
recommendations for Countdown Pharmacy Bayfair and the
pharmacist, including:

– For the pharmacy to provide
HDC with a report detailing all incidents occurring six
months prior to this report.

– For the pharmacy to
provide HDC with a review of the effectiveness of the
dispensing robot in preventing incidents. The robot was
installed by the pharmacy after the dispensing
errors.

– For the pharmacy to undertake an audit of
staff compliance with the updated dispensing standard
operating procedures (SOPs).

– For the pharmacy to
provide education to staff across Countdown Pharmacy sites
on the issues identified in this report.

– For the
pharmacist to provide HDC with a report detailing any errors
made over the six months prior to the report, including
actions taken to prevent similar errors in future

“I
am pleased to see this matter has been taken seriously and
changes made to improve the working environment and that
appropriate support has been provided for the pharmacist,”
said Ms
McDowell.

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