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July 20, 2006
New IOM Report on Medication Errors
Hot off the presses, the Institute of Medicine today released a report on "Preventing Medication Errors".
Preventing Medication Errors (Quality Chasm Series): http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11623.html
Key findings of the report are that a quarter of all medication errors are preventable, and that the best prevention is good clinician-patient communication and good intra-institutional communication (between the clinician, pharmacist and other members of the support team).
In an rare but welcome move, the FDA immediately released a statement of support for the report.
FDA Statement on Institute of Medicine's Report on Preventing Medication Errors: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01414.html
The FDA statement outlines a series of resources and actions related to improvements in this area. As a significant part of this, they recommend access to reliable and understandable medication information for the health care consumer, recommending the following resource from the National Library of Medicine.
DailyMed: http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/about.cfm
"This Web site provides health information providers and the public with a standard, comprehensive, up-to-date, look-up and download resource of medication content and labeling as found in medication package inserts."
Posted by pfa at July 20, 2006 05:33 PM