Medication errors harm 1.5 million Americans each year, reveals IOM report

http://www.newstarget.com/z019726.html

NewsTarget.com printable article
Originally published July 21 2006
Medication errors harm 1.5 million Americans each year, reveals IOM report
(NewsTarget) A new report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reveals that at
least 1.5 million Americans are made sick, injured, or killed every year by
errors in prescribing or administering medication.
The IOM report, which was requested by Congress in 2003, concluded that drug
mistakes in hospitals are so common that any given patient will experience a
medical error every day he or she stays there.

"Everyone in the health care system knows this is a major problem, but
there's been very little action, and it's generally remained on the back
burner," says IOM panel member Charles B. Inlander.

The report cites common errors like doctors writing prescriptions that could
negatively interact with the drugs a patient is already taking, pharmacists
filling prescriptions for medications of the wrong strength, and nurses
either dispensing the wrong medicine altogether, or wrong doses of the right
medicines in intravenous drips.

The report's authors suggest possible solutions, such as requiring hospitals
to have a standardized bar-code system to ensure correct medications and
dosages. However, drug companies and drug vendors have created six different
systems that require different bar-code readers to work, so such a system
has not been effective so far.

Though the focus of the study was not to determine the FDA's role in medical
errors, the report made it clear that IOM experts believe the FDA and
pharmaceutical companies have not effectively made drug packaging
error-proof, or made drug information accessible to the public.

The report also found that hospitals and long-term care facilities do not
report medical errors to patients unless the errors result in death or
injury -- a policy the IOM says must change, as past studies have found that
drug errors cause at least 400,000 preventable deaths every year in
hospitals, as well as more than 800,000 such deaths in nursing homes and
530,000 preventable deaths among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics.

"Jan Drew" wrote in message
. net...
http://www.newstarget.com/z019726.html

NewsTarget.com printable article
Originally published July 21 2006
Medication errors harm 1.5 million Americans each year, reveals IOM report
(NewsTarget) A new report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reveals that
at least 1.5 million Americans are made sick, injured, or killed every
year by errors in prescribing or administering medication.
The IOM report, which was requested by Congress in 2003, concluded that
drug mistakes in hospitals are so common that any given patient will
experience a medical error every day he or she stays there.

"Everyone in the health care system knows this is a major problem, but
there's been very little action, and it's generally remained on the back
burner," says IOM panel member Charles B. Inlander.

The report cites common errors like doctors writing prescriptions that
could negatively interact with the drugs a patient is already taking,
pharmacists filling prescriptions for medications of the wrong strength,
and nurses either dispensing the wrong medicine altogether, or wrong doses
of the right medicines in intravenous drips.

The report's authors suggest possible solutions, such as requiring
hospitals to have a standardized bar-code system to ensure correct
medications and dosages. However, drug companies and drug vendors have
created six different systems that require different bar-code readers to
work, so such a system has not been effective so far.

Though the focus of the study was not to determine the FDA's role in
medical errors, the report made it clear that IOM experts believe the FDA
and pharmaceutical companies have not effectively made drug packaging
error-proof, or made drug information accessible to the public.

The report also found that hospitals and long-term care facilities do not
report medical errors to patients unless the errors result in death or
injury -- a policy the IOM says must change, as past studies have found
that drug errors cause at least 400,000 preventable deaths every year in
hospitals, as well as more than 800,000 such deaths in nursing homes and
530,000 preventable deaths among Medicare recipients in outpatient
clinics.

That's almost 2,000,000 deaths. If this is correct, for about 2 of 3 people
die, it is because of medication errors (There were about 2,500,000 deaths
in 2003).

This is particularly bad in nursing homes: More people die (800,000) each
year because of medication mistakes in nursing homes than there are deaths
in nursing homes (685,089 in 2003). I guess the medication errors kill
people more than once!

Jeff