MORE than 230 million annual medication errors occur in UK's National Health Service (NHS) costing the taxpayer upward of 98.5 million (>A$175m), according to new research from the Universities of Sheffield and York, commissioned by the NHS.
The project aimed to quantify the number of medication errors in the NHS in England and the costs of those errors to the NHS as well as health losses.
Avoidable adverse drug reactions (ADRs) directly cause 712 deaths per year, but ADRs could be a contributory factor to between 1,700 and 22,303 deaths a year, authors postulated, which means the costs associated with medication errors could be "much higher" than the stated 98.5m.
University of York Professor of Health Economics Mark Sculpher, said, "Although these error rates may look high, there is no evidence suggesting they differ markedly from those in other high-income countries".
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