WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Dr. P. L. Alekhya*

ABSTRACT

Medication Error is one of the most common causes of un-intentional harm. Health grades reports suggest that annual deaths attributable to Medication errors are more than 250,000. This number is exceeded by only deaths due to Heart Diseases (700,142) and Cancers (553,768). 37.6 $ Billion costs are directly associated with Medication errors which are preventable. The extra Medical costs of treating medical errors occurring in hospitals alone conservatively amounts to 3.5 $ billion per year. This estimate does not take into account lost Wages and Productivity or additional Health care costs. The impact of these errors on patients includes increased length of the stay in hospitals, disability and mortality. Understanding the magnitude and nature of harm in primary care is important. Ongoing research plays a key role in identifying the works to improve safety and how to implement best practices. The range of opportunities for interventions in terms of reducing error rates, those provided by clinical pharmacists are quite promising.