Medication errors reported to U.S. Poison Control Centers, 2000-2012

Previous studies of medication errors have largely focused on healthcare facilities and have not reported generalizable national trends among out-of-hospital medication errors.

We sought to understand U.S. trends in medication errors, including the age-related risks, the involved medications, and the medical outcomes.

We performed a retrospective analysis of National Poison Data System (NPDS) data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers for years 2000-2012. Medication error cases were analyzed by age, gender, pharmaceutical involved, substance rank, dosing error type, management site, level of healthcare received, and medical outcome. Trends in medication error rates were analyzed using Poisson regression.

From 2000 to 2012, the NPDS recorded 2,913,924 calls reporting unintentional pharmaceutical-related errors that met inclusion criteria. Non-healthcare facility calls comprised 99.2% calls related to unintentional therapeutic errors. Eighty-seven percent of medication errors were managed on site. The annual medication error rate for all callers per 10,000 U.S. population increased significantly (p < 0.0001) by 69.8% from 2000 (4.98 calls per 10,000 population) to 2012 (8.46 calls per 10,000 population). Among adults aged 20 years and older, age was positively correlating (r = 0.96) with the rate of medication error. Analgesics were the most frequent pharmaceutical class involved in medication errors for ages 6-49 (N = 221,061). Among ages 20-49 years, opioid-related medication errors decreased by 7.9% from 2010 to 2012. Cardiovascular drugs were the leading source of injury among all ages (N = 14,440) and also the leading pharmaceutical class involved in medication errors among adults 50 years and older (N = 187,760).

Medication errors continue to be a source of preventable injury with increasing incidence across the out-of-hospital population.