Preventing Harm from High-Alert Medications

摘要

One of the 12 interventions that the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) recommends for its 5 Million Lives Campaign—which has set a target of reducing five million incidents of harm from December 2006 to December 2008—is "Prevent Harm from High-Alert Medications . . . starting with a focus on anticoagulants, sedatives, narcotics, and insulin."rnMedications are the most common intervention in health care and are also most commonly associated with adverse events in hospitalized patients. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Preventing Medication Errors, 1.5 million preventable adverse drug events (ADEs) occur each year in the United States, and 400,000 adverse drug events that occur each year in hospitalized patients result in $3.5 billion in additional costs.