A recent study published in Pediatrics reviewed 960 randomly selected charts from 12 children's hospitals. The study found 107 unique adverse drug events, which, broken down, included 11.1 adverse drug events per 100 patients, 15.7 per 1000 patient-days, and 1.23 per 1000 medication doses.

According to the study, “Twenty-two percent of all adverse drug events were deemed preventable, 17.8% could have been identified earlier, and 16.8% could have been mitigated more effectively. The most common medication classes causing adverse drug events were opioids/ analgesics (51%) and antibiotics, and the most common stages of the medication management process associated with preventable adverse drug events were monitoring and prescribing/ordering.” The highest rate of adverse drug events per patient occurred in the hematology/oncology units.

Opioid analgesics include morphine, codeine, fentanyl and other pain medications. The risk is pain medication overdose. There are several reasons for this including:

1. The increased difficulty of calculating dosages of pain medication for children
2. Failure to adequately monitor the patient
3. The dangerous nature of these medications
   

These are extremely dangerous drugs and a small error in administration of these drugs can result in serious injury or death. There are also situations where the pain medication has adulterations or other defects that cause injury. For example, in the last few months, FDA has announced a number of recalls and health alerts involving fentanyl.

If your child experienced serious injury or death after being administered a pain medication or any medication in a hospital, you should contact a medical malpractice lawyer immediately. To contact attorney Fred Pritzker, managing attorney for our medical malpractice cases, for information on medication overdose lawsuits, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free) or submit our free case consultation form.

Article: "Development, Testing, and Findings of a Pediatric-Focused Trigger Tool to Identify Medication-Related Harm in US Children's Hospitals,"Glenn S. Takata, MDa,b, Wilbert Mason, MD, MPHc, Carol Taketomo, PharmDe, Tina Logsdon, MSf and Paul J. Sharek, MD, MPHg, PEDIATRICS, Vol. 121 No. 4, April 2008, pp. e927-e935.

Labels: children's health, medication error, pain medication overdose

A recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine assessed the extent to which care processes recommended for pediatric outpatients are delivered by analyzing the medical records of 1536 children. The results were not encouraging:

On average, according to data in the medical records, children in the study received 46.5% (95% confidence interval [CI], 44.5 to 48.4) of the indicated care. They received 67.6% (95% CI, 63.9 to 71.3) of the indicated care for acute medical problems, 53.4% (95% CI, 50.0 to 56.8) of the indicated care for chronic medical conditions, and 40.7% (95% CI, 38.1 to 43.4) of the indicated preventive care.

Quality varied according to the clinical area, with the rate of adherence to indicated care ranging from 92.0% (95% CI, 89.9 to 94.1) for upper respiratory tract infections to 34.5% (95% CI, 31.0 to 37.9) for preventive services for adolescents.
Deficits in the quality of care provided to children appear to be similar in magnitude to those previously reported for adults. Strategies to reduce these apparent deficits are needed. (Quote from below-referenced article, "The Quality of Ambulatory Care Delivered to Children in the United States")

Poor medical care for children is unacceptable. Now that we know children are at risk, we need to find why their care is not adequate and fix the problems. Continuing medical education, a requirement for maintaining a medical license, should have mandatory courses on juvenile health. Also, agreed-upon basic guidelines for care need to be established, and federal and state governments need to make sure this basic care is paid for by public or private insurance.
For a number of reasons it is in our country’s best interests to care for our children. For those who can’t think beyond their pocketbook, adequate medical care for our children now will prevent future medical expenses when they become adults.

If you suspect that your child received inadequate medical care and was seriously injured as a result, please contact a medical malpractice attorney at Pritzker | Olsen. Attorneys Fred Pritzker and Elliot Olsen have been named “Super Lawyers” by Law & Politics magazine. For a free consultation, call 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free) or submit our free case consultation form.

Article: "The Quality of Ambulatory Care Delivered to Children in the United States,"
Rita Mangione-Smith, M.D., M.P.H., Alison H. DeCristofaro, M.P.H., Claude M. Setodji, Ph.D., Joan Keesey, B.A., David J. Klein, M.S., John L. Adams, Ph.D., Mark A. Schuster, M.D., Ph.D., and Elizabeth A. McGlynn, Ph.D., The New England Journal of Medicine, October 11, 2007, Volume 257: 1515-1523.

Labels: children's health, medical malpractice lawyer