Drug errors cluster at start of each month

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A San Diego researcher has found fatalities from medication errors rise by as much as 25 percent in the first days of each month.

David Phillips of the University of California, in an article in the January issue of the journal Pharmacotherapy, says the most likely explanation for the beginning-of-the-month errors is an increase in pharmacy workloads and a consequent increase in their error rates.

"Government assistance payments to the old, the sick and the poor are typically received at the beginning of each month. Because of this, there is a beginning-of-the-month spike in purchases of prescription medicines," Phillips says.

"Pharmacy workloads go up and -- in line with both evidence and experience -- error rates go up as well. Our data suggest that the mortality spike occurs at least partly because of this phenomenon."

Phillips and his co-authors examined all U.S. death certificates from 1979 through 2000 to analyze the 131,952 deaths classified as fatal poisoning accidents from drugs. A small number, 3.2 percent, of the deaths were from adverse effects of the right drug in the right dose, but the vast majority, 96.8 percent, resulted from medication errors.