In its report, the National Academy of Sciences said federal and state government agencies should pay more attention to the safety of patients when they license, evaluate and regulate health care providers. It said state licensing boards should periodically re-examine doctors and nurses to check their competence and knowledge of safety practices. More than 7,000 Americans die each year as a result of 'medication errors,' which include the prescribing or dispensing of the wrong drugs, the panel said. Most medical errors, it said, result not from individual recklessness, but from basic flaws in the way hospitals, clinics and pharmacies operate. For example, it said, pharmacists often have difficulty deciphering the writing of doctors who prescribe drugs.
Many drug names sound alike, causing confusion for doctors, nurses and patients.
And in a fragmented health care system, doctors often do not have complete information about treatments prescribed for their patients by other physicians. These frightening numbers have been known by medical researchers for at least a decade. The startling conclusion from the report is how easy it would be to correct many of the fatal errors. The institute, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, has now put its authority behind specific corrective measures. Dr. Mark Chassin, another of the report's co-authors and a professor of health policy at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, says the report shows that hospitals are not as safe as most Americans believe.