Lu and Roughead reported factors associated with a patient reporting medication errors. These can help to identify patients who may benefit from better communication between healthcare providers. The authors are from Harvard Medical School.
Determinants associated with patient-reported medication errors:
(1) poor coordination of medical care
(2) seeing multiple specialists
(3) having multiple chronic conditions
(4) being hospitalized in the previous 2 years
(5) multiple emergency room visits
Additional factors:
(1) young adults were more likely to report an error than an elderly adult
(2) cost of care tended to correlate with medication errors
Limitations:
• There are quite a few limitations to the study such as recall bias, study design and mining a database designed for a different purpose.
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