Emergency room patients who show up with adverse drug events use more services and are more expensive than ER patients who present for other reasons, according to a study published Friday in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Patients who suffered adverse drug events were 50 percent more likely to spend extra days in the hospital per month than other ER patients, and incurred nearly double the adjusted median monthly cost of care of other ER patients ($325 vs. $96).
"These medication-related visits to the emergency department are common and costly, and nearly 70 percent of them are preventable," lead study author Corinne Hohl, MD, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, said in a statement. While some patients didn't use medications correctly, many suffer side effects, because they don't take their meds as directed.
Although adverse drug events are the most common cause of preventable non-surgical adverse events in medicine, they are not necessarily the first thing ER doctors check for in ER patients.
To learn more:
- read the press release from the American College of Emergency Physicians