The Impact of Medication Errors

In the United States, medication errors have become one of the leading causes of injury and avoidable harm in healthcare organizations. These errors affect nearly 5% of hospitalized patients and can be detrimental to patient safety.

A single medication error may prolong a hospital stay by up to 10 days or even result in death. Consequently, the United States healthcare system estimates it spends over 20 billion dollars each year due to medication errors. With the adverse patient outcomes and high costs associated with medication errors, it is important for care teams to become familiar with common strategies to learn from previous errors and to reduce the likelihood of future ones.