Study Urges Low-Tech Solutions for Medical Errors Buzz Up Send Email IM Share Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print 1 hr 13 mins agoSUNDAY, Oct. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Standardizing the look of medication labels could significantly decrease costly and potentially harmful medication errors, a new study suggests.
Anesthesiologists at Penn State Hershey testing a simple color-coding system in simulated emergency room situations said the universal system could help prevent some of the 1.5 million adverse drug reactions each year caused by medication mistakes. These mistakes cost the health-care industry an estimated $3.5 billion annually.
In the study, which is to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in Orlando, Fla., volunteer anesthesiologists, residents and nurses drew medications with different colored labels at an ever-increasing speed to mimic an emergency
