Studies suggest that 400,000 deaths in the US each year may be attributed to medical error, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates that at any time, 1 in 25 hospital patients contract an infection in a health care setting.
One of the most common errors in both inpatient and outpatient settings? Medication errors and adverse drug events.
As you can imagine, the fallout of medical errors can have long term effects on the patient’s physical and mental health, bank account, and family/friend relationships.
Which brings us to Patient Safety Awareness Week, an annual recognition event intended to encourage people to learn more about patient safety in health care settings and to promote important discussions to motivate change and improvement. Preventing harm to patients is a public health concern that begs to be addressed and since everyone interacts within a health care system at some point, we all have a role in advancing safe care and spreading awareness about patient safety.
We urge you to read how the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is advancing patient safety and how people are addressing total systems safety in health care.
Did you know its estimated that 16.4 billion is spent annually on inpatient preventable medication errors and 4.2 billion is spent annually on outpatient medical errors? Learn more here.