The February 28^th issue of the British medical journal The Lancet reports that deaths from medication mistakes in the United States more than doubled between 1983 and 1993, with the sharpest increase coming in deaths among outpatients. Fatalities among outpatients account for more than half the total from 1983 to 1993. David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, headed the research team. "Something scary is going on and we should be worried," he said.

During that period, the number of deaths from accidental poisoning by drugs and other medicines climbed from 851 to 2,098. Included in those figures is the number of deaths among outpatients, which increased from 172 to 1,459. In 1983, outpatients were three times more likely than inpatients to die of medication errors, but by 1993 the risk was 6.5 times greater.

The study was based on an analysis of all U.S. death certificates that listed cause of death as a medication mistake. The certificates did not make clear whether the deaths were caused by a medical professional’s error or patient error. The study also did not include deaths caused by natural adverse reactions to medicine.

The researchers found that the increase in death rate attributable to medication mistakes is sharper than the increase for any cause of death other than AIDS. The data show the problem is not the medicines themselves, because the same medicines so not cause such increased death rates when used on patients in the hospital.