Over 1,000,000 Preventable Deaths a Year Are Due to Medication Mistakes

On March 5, 2010, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR)the part of the facility" and found them
reported that a nursing home in Wadena wasresponsible for neglect. Unfortunately situations
blamed for administering the wrong medication tosuch as this are all too common.
three of its residents. And because of theseThere Are Over 1,000,000 Preventable Deaths A
medication errors, the three residents were sentYear Due to Medication Mistakes
to the emergency room. Within several days oneOver 1,000,000 deaths and injuries occur in the
of the patients died.United States every year because of medication
Shortly before MPR brought this information publicmistakes and prescription errors. Although these
the Minnesota Department of Health released theerrors are considered to be preventable many
records of their investigation of the nursing homelong term care facilities and nursing homes do not
involved in this tragedy - Fair Oaks Lodge intake the necessary precautions to prevent these
Wadena. Their report showed that the medicationavoidable and sometimes fatal accidents from
in question was inappropriately distributedoccurring.
between May 27, 2009 and June 12, 2009.As the baby boomer generation gets older,
One of the residents got his medication at thenursing home abuse is a becoming an even faster
wrong time. The other two were givengrowing concern. All too many families who have
medications that should have been given toentrusted nursing homes with the care and well
someone else.being of their loved ones are finding that some of
One of the people who got the wrong medicationthese facilities are doing much more harm than
was hospitalized on June 1, 2009. Three days latergood.
this woman, who had Alzheimer's, was taken offIf you feel that someone you care for has
life support. She died a couple of days thereafter.suffered because they have been given the
The medical records indicated that the wrongwrong medication or if they have suffered abuse
medication had caused her blood pressure to dropin any other way the people or corporate entities
and that she also had contracted pneumonia.that area responsible should pay for their neglect.
According to the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune,It is possible that your loved one may be entitled
the facility's administrators attempted to attributeto a personal injury settlement.
the misdeeds to "a single employee who made anIf you have any questions you may want to
error." However, the Minnesota Department ofcontact a law firm that specializes in medical
Health's investigation showed that four staffmalpractice and nursing home abuse. A simple
members of Fair Oaks Lodge were involved andsearch on the World Wide Web will yield a
were blamed for these errors.considerable number of law firms that you can
Their investigation "indicated a systems failure oncontact.