IOM Publishes Recommendations to Reduce Medication Errors
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies is releasing a report on how to prevent medication errors following its Congress mandate to research adverse drug events (ADEs). The report brief (pdf) states that:
“in hospitals, errors are common during every step of the medication process–procuring the drug, prescribing it, dispensing it, administering it, and monitoring its impact–but they occur most frequently during the prescribing and administering stages. When all types of errors are taken into account, a hospital patient can expect on average to be subjected to more than one medication error each day. However, substantial variations in error rates are found across facilities.”
The report encourages patients to take a more active role in their own care by understanding and monitoring the medication they take. It asks healthcare providers to involve and educate patients, as well as make more extensive use of information technologies in prescribing and dispensing drugs. Hospitals should also put in place ADE monitoring programs.
See also: Institute of Medicine Worried about State of ER.
July 20, 2006 Related topics: Quality, Safety, Errors, Pharmaceuticals, IT & software