Drug errors injure more than 1.5 million a year.

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MSNBC.com Drug errors injure more than 1.5 million a year Report calls for all prescriptions to be electronic by 2010 The Associated Press Updated: 6:47 p.m. ET July 20, 2006 WASHINGTON - More than 1.5 million Americans are injured every year by drug errors in hospitals, nursing homes and doctor’s offices, a count that doesn’t even estimate patients’ own medication mix-ups, says a report that calls for major steps to increase patient safety. Topping that list: All prescriptions should be written electronically by 2010, the Institute of Medicine said. At least a quarter of all medication-related injuries are preventable, the institute concluded in the report it released Thursday. Perhaps the most stunning finding of the report was that, on average, a hospitalized patient is subject to at least one medication error per day, despite intense efforts to improve hospital care in the six years since the institute began

focusing attention on medical mistakes of all kinds. The new probe couldn’t say how many victims of drug errors die. A 1999 estimate put the number of deaths, conservatively, at 7,000 a year. Also unknown is how many of the injuries are serious. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13954142/ "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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