Medication Errors

In 1999, the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report claiming that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year because of preventable medical mistakes. A shocking statistic, the report has made American consumers vigilant about the quality of health care in the U.S. in recent years. There are plenty of proven methods for reducing medical errors found in a plethora of medical literature, but many of these strategies have not been adopted. In addition to the IOM report, the safety of prescription drugs has been a major healthcare concern since massive drug recalls have been announced, which has resulted in reports finding the FDA’s oversight of drug safety to be lacking.

Although instances of medical malpractice can never be fully eliminated, studies and reports have continued to reveal serious flaws, in addition to seemingly easy to eliminate mistakes, including wrong medications and prescription errors. Collected from Jury Verdict Research, Marsh Inc., and the Boston-based Risk Management Foundation, the most common cause of medial malpractice lawsuits against hospitals are because of medication errors.

Medication errors occur when patients allege they were given the wrong medication, the wrong medication dose, the wrong form of the medication, given the medication at the wrong time or never given their medication at all. Prescription errors can also occur if they are written incorrectly or illegibly by doctors, read incorrectly by nurses, filled incorrectly by pharmacists and administered to the wrong patients. Medical malpractice because of wrong medications and prescription error problems have received the most attention of all patient safety issues, but practical solutions have yet to be applied to the majority of hospitals, doctor’s offices, pharmacies and other medical centers.

In addition to challenges regarding the quality of health care that require a major overhaul, the use of prescription drugs for "off-label" uses presents problems as well. Off-label prescribing is common, allowing patients to benefit from drugs that were not initially approved for certain uses, but 70 percent of all drugs still do not come with pediatric safety guidelines. While commonly prescribed medications for children, such as antibiotics, asthma drugs and analgesics have been well studied in younger patients, the majority of drugs prescribed to children are off-label, allowing a guessing game when it comes to figuring out specific doses.

Since children are smaller, some doctors will just scale back the prescription dose and frequency, but it is more complicated than size alone. Children’s bodies can use up a drug quicker, so they might need a higher dose in actuality. As children develop, from birth to about the age of 21, their gastrointestinal, neurological and cardiovascular systems change, so medications must be adjusted. If prescribed too little or too much of a drug, the results can be devastating. The room for prescription error, as a result, is significant when it comes to children.

Because of the focus on drug safety and medical malpractice, drug companies are beginning to launch new studies testing drugs on younger patients. Although pediatric-drug trials are expensive, risky and time consuming, simply ignoring the effects of sometimes life saving drug therapies is even riskier and more costly in the end. The children currently getting off-label drugs are instead the ones being tested on and are being given improper drug dosages as a result.

The more active American consumers are in decisions governing their health care, the more pressure there will be for positive changes. Instances of medical malpractice can be fatal, but focusing on ways to eliminate preventable mistakes by using new technologies and other methods can drastically reduce cases of doctor malpractice resulting from wrong medications and prescription errors.