Researchers at Sheffield University conducted a rapid literature review in order to assess the incidence and prevalence of medication errors in the UK, as well as the costs and health burden associated with such errors.

They then used mathematical modelling to estimate national prevalence of errors at different stages of the medication use process and the burden of errors in the NHS. They estimated that a massive 237 million errors occur annually at some point in the medication process, although nearly 75% of these have minimal potential to cause harm.

About 66 million possibly clinically significant errors occur per year. There is minimal evidence about how these errors lead to patient harm. The researchers estimated that the annual NHS costs of definitely avoidable ADRs were 98.5 million pounds, causing 712 deaths and contributing to 1708 further deaths.

NSAIDs, anticoagulant and antiplatelet medications were implicated in over a third of avoidable ADR admissions. They highlight the need for improving the way information on patient errors is collected as well as interventions to reduce errors.

The full report is available here.