Drug errors harm 1.5 million

At least 1.5 million people are harmed in U.S. health facilities each year by medication errors, at a cost of at least $3.5 billion at hospitals alone — not counting lost wages or additional health-care costs, according to an Institute of Medicine study released Thursday.

That translates to about one medication error a day for each hospital patient, the report said.

Most of the errors don't harm the patient, the report said. But they point to a need for better communication between health care providers and patients, easy-to-grasp drug information for patients and widespread use by hospitals of technology tools such as electronic prescriptions and decision-support programs.

It's hard to quantify, apples-to-apples, how many medication errors occur in Utah hospitals because of differences in definitions and reporting rules, most voluntary. But the 2006 Utah's Health: An Annual Review says about 17.6 percent of patients admitted to the hospital experience at least one adverse event during their stay, which can include medication errors. The Utah study defines an adverse event as something that kills the patient, prolongs the hospitalization or results in impairment.

Since October 2001, about 16 percent of "sentinel events" reported by Utah hospitals had medication as a contributing though not necessarily sole factor, said Iona Thraen, patient safety director for the Utah Department of Health.

"That's clearly under-reporting," she said, citing the earlier, much-publicized IOM report on medical errors that would have predicted 300-400 errors in Utah each year. Instead about one-tenth that number were reported under the state's voluntary system.

Minor medical errors don't have to be reported at all to the state, and that also makes comparison to the national data hard.

Utah also uses hospital discharge data to get a handle on medical errors, but those numbers are inexact, too, says Wu Xu, director of the Office of Health Care Statistics in the health department. They can see "indications of potential adverse events." It does, however, show trends and it's clear errors are gradually dropping, she says, in part because hospitals are embracing the type of technology the new IOM report touts.

Some Utah hospitals are clearly ahead of the curve, say experts at Intermountain Healthcare and University Hospital. Both use electronic tools extensively to reduce errors and help physicians and other care providers make sound decisions about medication.