How many times have you had a prescription switched without your knowledge or permission?

Not just switched to a generic version of the prescribed drug, but to a different drug altogether.

Yet the practice of swapping out medications is perfectly legal in most states.

It’s called “therapeutic substitution” and it happens when a patient is switched from to a cheaper medication in the same class of drugs.

With therapeutic substitution,a pharmacist substitutes a chemically different drugfor the drug that the physician actually prescribed.

The drug substituted by the pharmacist belongs to the same pharmacologic class or to the same therapeutic class.

However, since the two drugs have different chemical structures, there are potentially adverse outcomes for the patient.

(Sometimes you can even tell by the shape or color of the pill!)

The move may be from a name brand to a generic, but it also can be to…