NHS medication errors could be playing a role in more than 22,000 deaths a year according to a ground-breaking new study.
More than 700 people die every year as a direct result of adverse drug reactions (ADRs), researchers from the Universities of Sheffield, York and Manchester found. In their worst-case scenario, ADRs are a contributory factor in 22,303 deaths a year.
Of the estimated 237 million medication errors that can occur annually at any point at which a patient comes into contact with a drug – including prescribing, dispensing, administering and monitoring – the researchers found that almost 75% are unlikely to result in harm to patients. Those errors that are clinically significant, with potential to cause moderate or severe harm, constitute 25.8% and 2% of overall errors, respectively.
Error rates in the UK are similar to those in other comparable health settings such as the US and other countries in the EU, the authors said. However, there is very little information on the harm that actually happens due to medication errors. This led the group to review studies related to the harm caused to patients from ADRs, which cost the health service a minimum of £98.5 million annually – a figure that rises to £1.6 billion in their worst-case scenario.
The cost of the errors varied widely, from £60 per error for inhaler medication, to more than £6million in litigation claims associated with anaesthetic errors. The researchers are calling for more work to be done on finding cost-effective ways of preventing medication errors and their potential harm to patients.
The findings of the report, which were unveiled at the World Patient Safety Science and Technology Summit have prompted Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt to launch ‘ground-breaking’ new measures to reduce patient harm and improve safety in the NHS. These include new systems linking prescribing data in primary care to hospital admissions so the NHS can see if a prescription was the likely cause of a patient being admitted to hospital; new defences for pharmacists if they make accidental medication errors rather than being prosecuted for genuine mistakes, as is the case currently; and accelerating the introduction of electronic-prescribing systems across more NHS hospitals this year – a change that could reduce errors by up to 50%.
Having read this report, it is clear that the Health Secretary’s new measures need to be implemented with immediate effect.