My wife was recently in the hospital and we brought her prescriptions along. She kept cautioning me to sneak them to her, because apparently they don’t like patients to bring their own drugs. This sort of makes sense; I imagine that if a patient overdoses on their own prescription meds, the hospital could be held liable in court. Have there been any cases like this where the hospital was sued on this basis and lost?
In the same vein, I’m on a couple of meds myself, and my wife warned me just as urgently not to take them openly, but to go in the bathroom and do it. Are hospitals at all liable for what could happen if a visitor were to OD on his or her own prescriptions?
It may have little to do with liability because it’s not just overdose that’s a risk, but drug interactions and the effects on other clinical interventions. Why doesn’t your wife just let the hospital staff dispense her medication?
Policy in the UK is the exact opposite of this. I have to go into hospital from time to time, and I am always specifically told to bring my prescription meds. Once there, the nursing staff go through the list of meds with me and make sure I take them regularly while there. If I am running short on a particular medicine they will even order it up from the hospital pharmacy.
The hospital gets paid for services rendered, and dispensing pills is a service. Bringing in your own pills and taking them yourself is cutting into their billing. On the other hand, it is important that they know what drugs you are on to avoid bad interactions.
They will lose far more money on one lawsuit than they will make with a hell of a lot of dispensed medication. Part of what you are paying for is a person who knows drug interactions to review what they are giving you.
Part of the reason for that is to make absolutely sure they know what you’re on, you wouldn’t believe how bad patient’s memories are (I’ve read countless casenotes where the patient has said they’re on a medication but can’t remember the dosage and sometimes even the name of the drug).
What the staff are supposed to do is to take your medication, record what you’re taking, how much and when and then lock it away so only they dispense it. At the hospital where I’m treated (as opposed to the one I work at where I’ve never been on a ward in the 10 years I’ve worked there) there are lockers by each bed on the ward where they store the brought-in drugs and dispense it during drug rounds from that store. The pharmacist also does a daily ward round to check drug charts.
Because hospital staff can be slow or get behind schedule. Because two Tylenols may be charged at $10 or $20, and because of our current insurance situation, we need to be careful about unexpected charges. We do have insurance, of course, but a lot of things aren’t covered, or are charged differently in a hospital as opposed to just being picked up at the drugstore in the usual way,.
That’s a tricky situation (and not one that’s at all familiar to me), but you might be risking some adverse drug interaction if you start dispensing medication yourself, and hiding it from the staff would make any intervention, in the case of an adverse event, difficult for them.
In my experience as a patient, the nursing staff usually just check the label, and the pharmacist checks the actual pills when they do a round (usually daily).
Absolutely. What your nurse doesn’t know about the pills you are sneaking behind her back can literally kill you.
For example, the cited Tylenol. Tylenol is a component in a LOT of drugs. You get Darvocet or Percocet from your nurse and then take your own Tylenol a bit later - you’re in danger of overdosing on the stuff. And Tylenol OD, particularly if no one knows until very late it’s happened, is a particularly nasty way to go. (Protracted death from liver failure).
There are certain drugs that should not be taken before certain medical tests, as they can affect the results or interact with contrasts and dyes and seriously harm you.
Many drugs go by different names and may look differently; it’s quite possible the pill you’re taking on your own is one your nurse is already giving you on med rounds - under another name. (Zestril, Prinivil, and Lisinopril are all exactly the same drug, for example - and they all look different.) This is another risk for overdose or interactions.
Another point; hospital rooms are in no way secure. Stuff gets stolen right out of them, often. It’s so common any good admissions nurse will tell you to leave your valuables, purse, jewelry, drugs, etc at home. Your pills are at risk of being stolen by other patients, visitors, and (sadly) hospital staff. Think you’ve found a safe place? You haven’t, trust me.
If you have an unusual drug or want to bring your own pills, fine. But let the nurse know what you’re doing. Tell them. “I’ve got my own Tylenol, I’m keeping it in my drawer, I’d like to take it now and then, but I will always let you know when I do. Is this safe with my other medications?” It really is for your own protection.
Your nurse or doctor or the hospital pharmacist is incapable of keeping you safe and taking effective care of you during your hospital stay if you are witholding crucial information (what drugs you are taking) from them.
I work in hospital billing. We do charge for medications, like gaffa said.
But also like gaffa said, the reason for hospitals not wanting you to bring your drugs in is in order to monitor the drug usage of patients. There definitely isn’t some conspiracy to get patients to have to purchase our drugs in order to boost the bottom line: it’s all about patient safety.
I like it when patients bring their prescription and non prescription medications.
Many medication names are confusingly similar and easily confused, but have very different dosages and effects.
We try to cap our tylenol dose to 2000 mg a day because it can harm your liver in large doses. If I’m giving you, for example, vicodin or percocet for post-surgical pain, I don’t want you taking tylenol for headache without me knowing it!
I collect the medication list from the patient using the RX bottles and/or the patients verbal report. I then report all the meds to the Doc and get an order to take or not take the meds, and also an order that the patient can take their own meds- how much, how often, etc.
The patients own meds get bundled up and sent to the pharmacy where they are inspected, confirmed and labeled with the patient’s information. We scan everything using bar codes- including the patient and the med as one of our many patient/medication safety layers.
The inspected medications are then kept at the nurses station and parsed back to the patient as ordered. Every medication we have, your and ours, is kept secured in and electronic cabinet.
Part of our discharge home process is to check and return the patient’s own meds to them when they go home.