Medicine Safety Report: Reducing Medication-Related Hospital Admissions

Use of medications is the most common intervention we make in health care, which means that problems with medicine use are also common.

Pharmacists have significant potential to reduce the number of medication-related hospital admissions and adverse medication events in Australia.

Medication Related Hospital Admissions

• 250,000 hospital admissions annually are a result of medication-related problems
• Annual cost $1.4 billion
• 400,000 additional presentations to emergency departments are likely to be due to medication-related problems
• 50% of this harm is preventable

After Hospital Discharge

• 3 in 5 hospital discharge summaries where pharmacists are not involved in their preparation have at least one medication error
• For 1 in 5 people at high risk of readmission, timely provision of the discharge summary did not occur
• Only 1 in 5 changes made to the medication regimen during hospital admission were explained in the discharge summary
• Over 90% of patients have at least one medicationrelated problem post-discharge from hospital

Community

• 1 in 5 people are suffering an adverse medication reaction at the time they receive a Home Medicines Review
• 1.2 million Australians have experienced an adverse medication event in the last 6 months
• Almost 1 in 4 older people prescribed medicines cleared by the kidneys are prescribed an excessive dose

For further reading, please check out this report by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.