The most common prescribing errors include:

• Confusing similar drug names
• Administering the incorrect dosage
• Failing to recognize a patient's history of allergies
• Miscommunication between doctors and pharmacists caused by illegible handwriting or abbreviation misinterpretation
• Failing to check patient identification to ensure a drug is administered to the intended patient

Medication mistakes - the most common form of medical errors that are made - not only cause serious harm to patients, but also add substantial costs to patient care. So while these mistakes are a matter of life and death, they are also a matter of economics.

Besides helping individual victims, Horn Law is committed to doing what it can to force pharmacies and health care facilities to implement comprehensive patient safety programs that reduce errors and lower health care costs. Some of the larger, metropolitan hospitals around the country have instituted computerized systems such as bar coding, which should help to reduce the error rate.

Smaller hospitals and facilities in more rural areas, however, typically do not have the resources to put such systems into place. The high costs of technological advancements leave many smaller hospitals and clinics more error-prone and their patients more vulnerable.

For more information regarding medical and pharmacy errors please see:

Medical Errors

Pharmacy Errors