Doctor / Hospital Drug Mistakes Injure 1.5m Yearly

The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, has issued a rather frightening report about injuries caused by drug mistakes. As someone who has been hospitalized in the last year, this report scared the hell out of me. Here are some of their findings:

1.5 million Americans are injured each year by drug mistakes in hospitals, nursing homes, and doctor's offices [this does not include screw-ups by the patient].

On average, a hospitalized patient is subjected to one medication mistake per day.

This report did not say how many medical mistakes cause serious injury or death, but a 1999 report put the number of deaths at around 7000 a year.

A preventable drug mistake can raise the hospital bill of a single patient by more than $5800.

There are 10,000 prescription drugs and 300,000 over-the-counter drugs on the market.

Michael Cohen, co-author of the report and president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, said, "The numbers are big. The injuries are big. This is a problem, it's serious and it continues." The report goes on to say that a quarter of the mistakes are preventable, and toward that goal, recommended that all prescriptions be written electronically.

I would like to think that a lot more than 25% are preventable. After all, if you prevent 25%, then 1.125 million Americans would still be injured each year. Is this an acceptable number? There is very little incentive to fix this problem. After all, fixing the problem might reduce profits. This is the drawback to having a "for profit" system instead of a "for the patient" system. Medical care should not be controlled by the profit-whores of corporate capitalism.