News tagged with 'Prescription Errors'

A published study points to July as the worst month for surgeries and fatal medication errors. The problems were found at teaching hospitals, not nonteaching hospitals suggesting that new doctors may be to blame.

Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife have filed his second lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare over the near-death experience of their twins over a drug mix-up at a Los Angeles hospital. The labels of the two drugs were never changed even though the drug maker knew they had caused prescription errors that led to the death of three infants, the complaint says.

California has collected over $2 million in fines from hospitals that have made medical errors which kill up to 200,000 patients every year nationally. The latest fines have been issued to 13 hospitals.

Patient safety was highly controversial on the House floor Saturday night when members shouted "trial lawyer" to one representative. But patient safety is generally agreed to be one key to bringing down health care costs and to save at least 98,000 deaths a year, as emphasized in this AAJ campaign.

A report by the Hearst Newspapers finds that about 200,000 people die from errors by doctors and infections in hospitals, which are largely preventable. Here are some of their stories.

Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly Buffington are suing the makers of the drug Heparin, accidentally given in a massive dose to their two-week old newborn twins by personnel at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.  Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace were given 10,000 units of the Heparin November 18th. They were supposed to receive 10 units of the blood thinner given in an IV to avoid blood clots. 

A new medical malpractice study conducted by a consumer interest group has shed new light on the prevalence of prescribed medication errors in the United States. Released Wednesday, the US Pharmacopeia study examined 100,000 cases of medication error, determining that over 7,000 Americans die each year from taking the

Rite Aid Corporation must pay $850,000 to the family of a woman who died shortly after receiving a misfilled prescription at the company's Andalusia, Alabama store. Jewell Deal, 78, died of a heart attack in 1999, one month after Rite Aid filled a prescription for double her doctor-recommended dosage of the blood pres

Health administrators with Stony Brook University Hospital and Medical Center in New York have blamed the death of a six-day-old infant on a prescription error. According to a hospital spokesperson, the baby underwent surgery to repair a heart valve ailment and was being given potassium chloride to regulate his fluids

The U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced this week that changes will soon be made to drug labels in an effort to control dangerous mix-ups that occur when medications have similar names. The FDA estimates that hundreds of thousands of Americans are injured each year because of medication errors. For examp

In an effort to reduce drug errors that kill an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 patients each year, the federal government recently unveiled a plan that calls for bar codes on packaging of all hospital-administered medications. Scanning the code will reveal the drug's properties, such as recommended dosage, expiration dat

A recent study conducted by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) reviewed over 5,000 medication errors to discover why and how such errors occurred. According to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCCMERP), a medication error is any preventable event th

A recent study by The Degge Group found that many doctors are uneducated when it comes to prescribing drugs that may negatively interact with one another. Researchers studied the prescribing habits of doctors who dispensed the now banned heartburn drug Propulsid. Figures indicate that between 1993 and 1998, 4,41

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices recently issued a warning about the names of three pairs of drugs, and the potential that both doctors and pharmacists could accidentally dispense one in place of the other. Prescribing errors often occur because of doctors' poor handwriting, as well as confusing drug names.