Medication safety in acute care in Australia

Results of incident reporting from hospitals show that incidents associated with medication remain the second most common type of incident after falls. It can be estimated that 190,000 medication-related hospital admissions occur per year in Australia, with estimated costs of $660 million. This review was undertaken for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to update a previous national report on medication safety conducted in 2002. The review is published in the August issue of the open access journal Australia and New Zealand Health Policy.