WASHINGTON, July 20 — Medication errors harm 1.5 million people and kill several thousand each year in the United States, costing the nation at least $3.5 billion annually, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a report released on Thursday.
Drug errors are so widespread that hospital patients should expect to suffer one every day they remain hospitalized, although error rates vary by hospital and most do not lead to injury, the report concluded.
The report, “Preventing Medication Errors,” cited the death of Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two and a health reporter for The Boston Globe, as a classic fatal drug mix-up. Ms. Lehman died in 1993 after a doctor mistakenly gave her four times the appropriate dose of a toxic drug to treat her breast cancer.
Recommendations to correct these problems include systemic changes like electronic prescribing and tips for consumers like advising patients to carry complete listings of their prescriptions to every doctor’s visit, the report said.
“The incidence of medication errors was surprising even to us,” said J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. “The solutions are complex and far-reaching and will present challenges.”
The report is the fourth in a series done by the institute, the nation’s most prestigious medical advisory organization, that has called attention to the enormous health and financial burdens brought about by medical errors.
The first report, “To Err Is Human,” was released in 1999 and caused a sensation when it estimated that medical errors of all sorts led to as many as 98,000 deaths each year — more than was caused by highway accidents and breast cancer combined.
After the first report, health officials and hospital groups pledged reforms, but many of the most important efforts have been slow to take hold.
Drug computer-entry systems, which are supposed to ensure that hospital patients get the right drugs at the right dose, are used in just 6 percent of the nation’s hospitals, said Charles B. Inlander, president of the People’s Medical Society, a consumer advocacy group, and an author of the report released Thursday.
Electronic medical records can help ensure that patients do not receive toxic drug combinations. The 1999 report urged widespread adoption of these systems. Thursday’s report called for all prescriptions to be written electronically by 2010.
Just 3 percent of hospitals have electronic patient records, said Henri Manasse, chief executive of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Few doctors prescribe drugs electronically.
Even simple medication safety recommendations — block printing on hand-written prescription forms — are widely ignored.
