TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Medication errors are injuring at least 1.5 million Americans each year, according to a new study headed by a University of Arizona expert.
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And when an error occurs, it adds $6,000 on average to a patient's hospital bill.
"The good news is, all of these types of injuries are preventable, using different strategies," said J. Lyle Bootman, UA pharmacy dean and chairman of the committee that produced the report for the national Institute of Medicine.
One of the report's top recommendations is for all prescriptions to be written and transmitted electronically, to eliminate illegible handwriting and signal potential drug reactions.
The report also recommends that patients must take a more active role in safeguarding their health, making sure they have a current list of medications with them whenever they go to a clinic or hospital.
Medication errors can be harmless or fatal, a mild dizziness from the wrong blood-pressure drug to a life-threatening allergic reaction to an antibiotic.
The most common place for the errors are in hospitals and nursing homes and those errors add up to $3.5 billion a year in added hospital costs, the report concluded.
The "Preventing Medical Errors" report follows a 1999 Institute of Medicine study that said up to 98,000 hospital patients were dying each year from preventable mistakes, including about 7,000 deaths from medication errors.
The report offered recommendations for government's role in reducing medication errors, including a $100 million annual investment in research on how to prevent them.
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