Florida - Pharmacy Medication Errors Remain a Major Problem
Medication errors, whether the result of pharmacy errors or medical malpractice represent a significant portion of the preventable medical errors that take place every year in Florida and throughout the U.S.
It was ten years ago that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) declared that as many as 98,000 people die each year needlessly because of "preventable medical harm and errors." A decade later, it is debatable whether any real progress has been made to reduce these errors and the harm that they can cause. Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, issued a report in May 2009 indicating that preventable medical harm still accounts for more than 100,000 deaths each year. The report gave the country a failing grade on the progress that has been made in implementing the recommendations from the IOM study that it believes are necessary to create a health-care system that is free of preventable medical errors.
The Consumer Union report reveals that few hospitals have adopted well-known systems to prevent medication errors, and the FDA rarely intervenes.
Some medication errors are caused by similar drug names, packaging and design. Confusion between primidone and prednisone caused the death of an adolescent in 2004, and a report from 2008 indicated that prednisone is commonly confused with 12 other drugs. In 2007, the twin babies of actor Dennis Quaid and his wife were given 1,000 times the prescribed dose of the blood thinner heparin, which was packaged in similar vials with blue labels as those used by the manufacturer for its pediatric dosage, according to the Quaids’ lawsuit and testimony before Congress.
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