What Impact Do Medication Errors Have On Nursing Home Residents?
http://www.ladailypost.com/content/what-impact-do-medication-errors-have-nursing-home-residents
The last 5-6 yrs of my career was spent working as a temp in the two largest nursing home pharmacies in the country. From what I saw from my vantage point was that there was a lot of meds that were just not given to the pt. I can’t count the times that I would get a call about needing a medication sent out STAT… and when I looked at the pt’s records… the pt got a 14 days supply 3-4 weeks ago… or longer… Depending on the medication… I would often refuse to send it out STAT/special delivery.. it can go on out on the next run.. since most facilities got TWO DELIVERIES EVERY DAY. I did not have access to the MAR’s (Medication Administration Record) forms, but obviously the staff member passing out the medications… just marked that it was given…even if there was no medication available to be given and never followed up to see that it was reordered. Reordering medications in a nursing home setting is simply pealing off part of the label and sticking it to a reorder sheet and faxing in the sheet when done giving out the medications to pts. In all too many nursing homes, the staff was too forgetful or too lazy to perform this simple task.
A new analysis points to surprisingly low rates of serious impacts from medication errors affecting nursing home residents, despite the fact that these errors remain fairly common.
The investigators noted that it’s unclear whether medication errors resulting in serious outcomes are truly infrequent or are under-reported due to the difficulty in ascertaining them. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Medication errors can cause considerable harm, and older adults in nursing homes may be especially vulnerable. To assess the prevalence of medication errors leading to hospitalizations and deaths in nursing home residents, and to determine the factors associated with these errors, Joseph Ibrahim, MBBS, FRACP, PhD, an academic physician in geriatric medicine at Monash University in Australia, and his colleagues conducted a literature search of relevant studies published between 2000 and 2015.
After identifying 11 studies, the researchers examined three types of medication errors: all medication errors, transfer-related medication errors, and potentially inappropriate medications.
Medication errors were common, involving 16 percent to 27 percent of residents in studies examining all types of medication errors. Transfer-related medication errors occurred in 13 percent to 31 percent of residents, while 75 percent of residents were prescribed at least one potentially inappropriate medication.
The team found that serious impacts of medication errors were surprisingly low, however, and they were reported in only zero to one percent of medication errors, with death being a rare event.
“This is an important step to addressing the global issue for improving the quality and safety of medications for older people,” Prof. Ibrahim said. “Nursing homes should review their systems of care from prescribing to administration. Good practice requires using a team-based approach involving the resident, care and nursing staff, pharmacists, and medical practitioners.”
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In other words patients in nursing homes are being charged for medications they aren’t receiving bringing up the cost of care to the patient and their insurance provider. It could. and probably does affect the health of the elderly patients in ways that show in small ways but add up.