A recent report from the well-respected Institute of Medicine (IOM) discloses that 1.5 million Americans are harmed by medication errors ever year. More than one-half of these injuries occurred in nursing homes.
The IOM is an independent group of health care leaders based in Washington, D.C., and advises the federal government on health issues. The report places blame across the health care system and follows a 1999 report entitled “To Err is Human” which found that medication errors caused 7,000 deaths a year – about one for every hospital in the U.S.
Read the IOM report and be an informed consumer of medical care. Another important source of information is published by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a watchdog group in Pennsylvania