Journal article
The Additional Cost of Perioperative Medication Errors
JOURNAL OF PATIENT SAFETY, v 19(6), p375
Oct 2023
PMID: 37249273
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The purpose of this report was to estimate the additional annual cost to the U.S. healthcare system attributable to preventable medication errors (MEs) in the operating room. The ME types were iteratively grouped by their associated harm (or potential harm) into 13 categories, and we determined the incidence of operations involving each ME category (number of operations involving each category/total number of operations): (1) delayed or missed required perioperative antibiotic (1.4% of operations); (2) prolonged hemodynamic swings (7.6% of operations); (3) untreated postoperative pain >4/10 (18.9% of operations); (4) residual neuromuscular blockade (2.9% of operations); (5) oxygen saturation <90% due to ME (1.8% of operations); (6) delayed emergence (1.1% of operations); (7) untreated new onset intraoperative cardiac arrhythmia (0.72% of operations); (8) medication documentation errors (7.6% of operations); (9) syringe swaps (5.8% of operations); (10) presumed hypotension with inability to obtain a blood pressure reading (2.2% of operations); (11) potential for bacterial contamination due to expired medication syringes (8.3% of operations); (12) untreated bradycardia <40 beats/min (1.1% of operations); and (13) other (13.0% of operations). Through a PubMed search, we determined the likelihood that the ME category would result in downstream patient harm such as surgical site infection or acute kidney injury, and the additional fully allocated cost of care (in 2021 U.S. dollars) for each potential downstream patient harm event. We then estimated the cost of the MEs across the U.S. healthcare system by scaling the number of MEs to the total number of annual operations in the United States (N = 19,800,000). The total estimated additional fully allocated annual cost of care due to perioperative MEs was $5.33 billion U.S. dollars.
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Details
- Title
- The Additional Cost of Perioperative Medication Errors
- Publication Details
- JOURNAL OF PATIENT SAFETY, v 19(6), p375
- Publisher
- LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS; PHILADELPHIA
- Grant note
- This work was supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, Rockville, Maryland; grant no.1K08HS024764-01)and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF; New York, New York; grant no. 2018093). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the AHRQ or DDCF. The AHRQ and DDCF did not have a role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001052266200005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85168428347
- Other Identifier
- 991021861202504721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Health Care Sciences & Services
- Health Policy & Services