{ "id": "1999-julyaugust-erring-pharmacists-dealing-drugs", "slug": "1999-julyaugust-erring-pharmacists-dealing-drugs", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-erring-pharmacists-dealing-drugs.html", "year": 1999, "month": "July/August", "monthNum": 7, "headline": "ERRING PHARMACISTS: Dealing drugs", "kicker": "ERRING PHARMACISTS", "author_name": "Bennett Cunningham", "author_title": "", "affiliation": "KTVT-TV (Dallas)", "summary": "A hidden camera investigation reveals that pharmacists who make potentially fatal medication errors often escape disciplinary action because lawsuits target pharmacies rather than individual pharmacists, shielding names from state boards. Journalists used public records and courthouse documents to track pharmacists involved in lawsuits and compare them against state disciplinary records to expose this accountability gap.", "keywords": [ "pharmacists", "lawsuits", "investigation" ], "topics": [ "Investigative Methods", "Data & Databases", "Crime & Justice" ], "technologies": [ "Access", "Excel" ], "full_text": "Pharmacists are among the most trusted professionals in the world. When we get sick, they dispense medicines to help us feel better. But when a pharmacist makes an error, it can be fatal.\n\nOur three-month hidden camera investigation found a disturbing case. A doctor in Texas prescribed a painkiller to a healthy mother. The few pills she ingested almost took her life.\n\nThe drug was not a painkiller; it was a drug for diabetics. Today, the patient is an invalid, unable to speak, eat and think for herself. The pharmacist dispensed the wrong drug. You might think the pharmacist who made the dispensing error was banished from his profession and leading an ignominious existence. You couldn't be more wrong.\n\nBoard unaware\n\nOur investigative report found that the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, which licenses and disciplines pharmacists, wasn't aware of many near-fatal mistakes. The reason is that when a patient sues, the lawsuit is against the pharmacy, rarely the pharmacist, which shields the pharmacist's name from the disciplinary board. Only if the patient files a complaint does the state get involved.\n\nThis story changed the way pharmacists in the state of Texas fill prescriptions\n\nTo make this story work, we needed a database. The idea was to track pharmacists found in lawsuits and determine if the state ever took disciplinary action. An open record request to the state yielded a plethora of great data. We asked for the full name, license number and date of birth of every pharmacist disciplined in the state of Texas since 1995. We requested the data on a floppy disk in either Access or Excel format. It wasn't a problem and a week later the data were cleaned and we were on our way. Sounds easy, but the bitter pill was just around the corner.\n\nThe basement of the Dallas County Courthouse is a musty old hovel. The ceiling is lined with fluorescent lights and the rows of yellow case files go on forever. The story was in here. I printed out a list of cases from the county computer. All of the lawsuits concerned large retail pharmacies. I whittled the list down by isolating the cases to large damage claims.\n\nPoring over paper\n\nFor two weeks, a researcher and I read the case files. We read every deposition, every interrogatory and every exhibit. Our mission: to find the name of each pharmacist involved. By the end of our research, we had volumes of legal pads filled with information on pharmacists. Now we had to figure out what to do with all of it.\n\nWe already had the data from the state. Next, we needed to find out if one of the pharmacists mentioned in any of the lawsuits was simultaneously disciplined by the state. After attending so many NICAR seminars, the phrase \"mapping out your data\" rang in my head. We kept it simple. We typed all the names of the pharmacists we found in the lawsuits into the database, then asked one basic question - which ones don't match? If there was a match between the state's list and our list derived from the lawsuits, the pharmacist was most likely disciplined from events arising from the case (we'd double-check this later).\n\nOnce the database determined whether there was a match, we asked other questions. Every time we entered a pharmacist's name, we entered other pertinent information on that same record. So, for example, we knew how many male pharmacists were addicted to controlled substances. We knew how many were convicted of crimes. The possibilities seemed endless. Only our thoroughness and our creativity limited the queries.\n\nComplex data\n\nThere were complications. The mass of data was so large that sometimes it made querying nearly impossible. Once, I had to print out the entire database on 500 sheets of paper because I couldn't get a query to work. After taping and stapling all the corresponding sheets together, I laid them out on my office floor. Then I did it the old fashioned way - I counted. I just couldn't get the computer to do it right. The mistake I made was organizing my data improperly. Remember mapping? Well, I didn't do a very good job. My data were not consistent, resembling a Word document rather than a well-oiled database. I cluttered the database with so much extraneous information that certain queries rendered the program useless.\n\nPlanning databases\n\nReporters trying to do a story like this should have an easy time if they plan their databases wisely. It is easy to plug in the names and license numbers for people and then check them against each other. The hard part comes in the details. That's where the database devil lives. He thrives in confusion and bad planning. He waits for you to find a new nugget for your story and then bam! You are toast. Gather, map and pray - three words to live by. No story should ever scare you. Always be ambitious in picking stories. Despite the fact that a poorly planned database can leave you in the database jail, good planning will land you on GO, and the rewards are endless.\n\nReporters trying to do a story like this should have an easy time if they plan their databases wisely.\n\nThe aftereffects of this story changed the way pharmacists in the state of Texas fill prescriptions. A new education program is underway and all pharmacists must triple-check every prescription before it leaves the counter.\n\nBennett Cunningham can be reached by e-mail at Bennettc@ktvt.com", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6", "extracted_at": "2026-07-05", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "2000-october-disciplinary-records", "score": 0.136 }, { "slug": "1997-decemberjanuary-military-hospitals-report", "score": 0.107 }, { "slug": "2000-october-doctors-and-damages", "score": 0.083 }, { "slug": "1998-may-undeserved-overtime", "score": 0.082 }, { "slug": "2000-julyaugust-hidden-costs", "score": 0.081 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-erring-pharmacists-dealing-drugs.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-julyaugust-erring-pharmacists-dealing-drugs.json" }