A National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLB) grant study of 558 unique individuals was undertaken to compare medications that patients took at admission compared to discharge. The study found that close to half of patients had heart medication errors that worsened patient’s heart conditions from prior to admission or during hospitalization. Furthermore, among those taking the drugs, the use of these medications between admission and discharge decreased in only 17% and actually increased in 12% of patients.
Heart Medication Errors Also Involve Dosing, Dispensing, and Timing Errors
There are many heart medications that doctors prescribe every day to patients. The types of errors are vast. Physicians often fail to give a certain medication. Communication about patient’s care is often not clear when emergency physicians take over care from other physicians. Confusion between a drug with a similar name and the drug that was prescribed may lead to significant adverse outcomes.
Factors Putting Patients at Higher Risk
Certain patients are also at higher risk for errors. For example, older patients are at higher risk of potentially life-threatening errors. This is due in part to underlying conditions that complicate the diagnosis picture for physicians. Similarly, chronic kidney disease makes patients more susceptible to the nephrotoxicity of some of the medications. Heavier patients also need more invasive blood pressure monitoring methods to ensure accuracy of the data. These factors lead to patients having adverse outcomes.
Simple Solutions Are the Answer
One of the reasons for this is many of the medications to treat comorbidities of heart failure can actually worsen the heart failure itself. The NHLB study recommends revisiting the medication prescribing approach. Emphasizing the role of education in bringing awareness of this concern to practitioners is step one. A second way could be through the electronic health record. The electronic health record can flag medications that worsen underlying conditions. Furthermore, doctors can try to find other ways to treat underlying comorbidities.
Heart medication errors remain a common problem faced by our healthcare system. These solutions could prevent this specific occurrence and other ways in which medication errors occur. Investments into changing the electronic health record and educating health professionals may be significant, but the results matter.
If you have had a medication error that you feel may have been a result of medical malpractice, we can evaluate the claim for you.
