BOSTON -- Team 5 Investigates has learned that state oversight of CVS will continue nearly twice as long as originally planned under an unprecedented state settlement, to give the chain more time to reduce the number of medication mix-ups.

Watch Video

"You shouldn't have to open the bottle at the store to make sure you're getting what your doctor has prescribed for you," said Jamie Bedford.

But that's exactly what she wishes she had done recently. A pharmacist at CVS in Natick made a mistake that had her taking the wrong medicine - a strong sedative - before heading to her teaching job.

"Every morning I was taking this pill and driving on the Mass Pike and I-495," Bedford said. "I don't want to think about what could have happened. Not only to myself but anyone else on the road."

Bedford didn't catch the error until days later when a school nurse noticed Bedford's strange behavior. CVS's reaction?

"All I got was a $10 copay back and a promise that someone would call me," she said. But that call never came.

CVS's vice president of pharmacy professional services, Papatya Tankut, admits the company did not follow its own policy after Bedford's medication mix-up.

Tuthill: "In every case the customers supposed to be contacted?"
Tankut: "That is our policy."
Tuthill: "And a report is supposed to be filed?"
Tankut: "That is our policy, yes."

Three years ago NewsCenter 5 started uncovering story after story of CVS pharmacies handing out the wrong prescriptions.

After 80 complaints to the Board of Pharmacy, CVS agreed to an unprecedented settlement with the state two years ago, requiring the chain to undergo an outside safety review.

"If we hadn't caught the error our outcome could have been much different," said Jode Johnson.

She and her husband Scott lodged one of those 80 complaints with the state. Their son Nicholas was just 9 months old at the time, and couldn't get over an ear infection despite taking a strong antibiotic. They discovered his prescription had been incorrectly filled at CVS in Attleboro.

"I had a 9-month-old. He couldn't tell me that it wasn't working. He couldn't tell me he was in pain so it was up to me," Johnson said.

Their son is now fine, but years later, no one can say how many of the 78 million prescriptions filled in Massachusetts each year are wrong.

"We don't know, we don't have a number," said Jean Pontikas of the Department of Public Health.

Johnson said, "I was flabbergasted when I read that it was up to the consumer to report an error. It shouldn't be that way."

Only North Carolina requires pharmacies to report mistakes. Massachusetts state Sen. Susan Tucker (D-Lawrence) wants that protection here, even though the Board of Registration in Pharmacy said the number of complaints, both overall and against CVS, has dropped dramatically since 2005. In that year, 151 complaints were filed, compared to 67 complaints in 2007.

"Consumers should be able to find a central database of which pharmacies perform the best and which pharmacies perform the worst," Tucker said.

Team 5 Investigates has learned the state will continue its oversight of the massive chain until December 2009, nearly twice as long as originally planned.

The state acknowledges CVS has made a lot of progress, but still wants better internal reporting to get at the root causes of errors. Additionally, the state wants pharmacists to take scheduled breaks and get incentives for accuracy.

"Quality is a continuous improvement process and we take that very seriously," said Tankut. "And we continue to look for new ways we can enhance our systems and processes."

Tuthill: "Do you think CVS is safer then it was two years ago?"

Pontikas: "I think it is, I think they still have a lot of work to do."

But for consumers like Bedford and the Johnsons, that's not good enough.

"We don't use CVS anymore," Johnson said.