Preventing Harm with the Use of Opioids, Anticoagulants and Insulin

The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania’s work on Adverse Drug Events (ADE) provides tools and support, and facilitates collaboration to help facilities reduce harm associated with opioids, anticoagulants, and insulin. 

Adverse Drug Events

Business Case:  According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an Adverse Drug Event (ADE) is an injury resulting from medical intervention related to a drug. This includes medication errors, adverse drug reactions, allergic reactions, and overdoses.

ADEs can happen anywhere: in hospitals, long-term care settings, and outpatient settings.

In inpatient settings, ADEs:

  • Account for an estimated 1 in 3 of all hospital adverse events
  • Affect about 2 million hospital stays each year
  • Prolong hospital stays by 1.7 to 4.6 days

Each year, ADEs in outpatient settings account for:

  • More then 3.5 million physician office visits
  • An estimated 1 million emergency department visits
  • Approximately 125,000 hospital admissions

The most common cause for patients 65 years of age and older to visit emergency departments were in three medication classes:

  • Oral anticoagulants or antiplatelet agents
  • Antidiabetic agents
  • Narrow therapeutic index agents

Together, these three medication classes caused nearly half of all emergency department visits for ADEs but were prescribed in only 9.4 percent of outpatient visits.

The good news is that most ADE’s are preventable. The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania provides tools and supports, and facilitates collaboration to help facilities reduce harm associated with opioids, anticoagulants, and insulin.

Through its Opioid Learning Action Network (LAN), HAP supports Pennsylvania’s hospitals in working collectively to identify, create, and disseminate promising practices to measurably increase the number of patients entering evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) and reduce overdose deaths.

HAP Contacts

For more information, contact Beth Murray. Media inquiries should be directed to Liam Migdail, director, media relations.
 


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