Medication Safety Basics
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Medication Safety is Important
Adverse drug events are harms resulting from the use of medication and include allergic reactions, side effects, overmedication, and medication errors. Adverse drug events are a serious public health problem. It is estimated that:
- 82 percent of American adults take at least one medication and 29 percent take five or more;1
- ADEs cause approximately 1.3 million emergency department visits and 350,000 hospitalizations each year;2
- $3.5 billion is spent on excess medical costs of ADEs annually;3
- More than 40% of costs related to ambulatory (non-hospital) ADEs might be preventable.3
The numbers of adverse drug events is likely to grow due to:
- Development of new medicines
- Discovery of new uses for older medicines
- Aging American population
- Increased use of medicines for disease treatment and prevention
- Expansion of insurance coverage for prescription medicines
Related Links
- Tips to Prevent Poisonings, CDC
- National Action Plan for Adverse Drug Event Preventionexternal icon, Department of Health and Human Services
- Taking Medicinesexternal icon, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Drug Information for Consumersexternal icon, Food and Drug Administration
- Buying & Using Medicine Safelyexternal icon, Food and Drug Administration
- Drug Safetyexternal icon, National Institutes of Health
- Safe Use of Medicines for Older Adultsexternal icon, National Institutes of Health
- VA Center for Medication Safety (VA MedSAFE)external icon, Department of Veterans Affairs
References
- Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University. Patterns of medication use in the United States, 2006external icon.
- Shehab N, Lovegrove MC, Geller AI, Rose KO, Weidle NJ, Budnitz DS. US emergency department visits for outpatient adverse drug events, 2013-2014. JAMA 2016;316:2115-25
- Institute of Medicine. Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors. Preventing Medication Errors, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press 2006.
Page last reviewed: September 28, 2010
Content source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention