The Additional Cost of Perioperative Medication Errors

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Economics
• Patient Safety
• Anesthesiology

Background:

• Medication errors (MEs) in the operating room pose a significant threat to patient safety.
• Quantifying the economic impact of these errors is crucial for resource allocation and quality improvement initiatives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To estimate the additional annual cost to the U.S. healthcare system resulting from preventable medication errors in the operating room.

Main Methods:

• Categorized 13 types of medication errors based on potential harm and determined their incidence during operations.
• Utilized PubMed to assess the likelihood of downstream patient harm (e.g., surgical site infections, acute kidney injury) from each ME category.
• Calculated the additional cost of care for each harm event and extrapolated to the total U.S. annual operating room procedures (N = 19,800,000).

Main Results:

• Medication errors occurred in various frequencies, with untreated postoperative pain (18.9%) and potential bacterial contamination from expired syringes (8.3%) being among the most common.
• The total estimated additional annual cost attributed to perioperative medication errors was $5.33 billion U.S. dollars (in 2021 U.S. dollars).

Conclusions:

• Preventable medication errors in the operating room represent a substantial financial burden on the U.S. healthcare system.
• Addressing these errors is essential for improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare expenditures.