Med error rate highest in radiology.

Serious medication errors are more likely in hospital radiology departments than in other hospital settings, research by The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) shows. From 2000 to 2004, 12 percent of the 2,032 medication errors reported in radiological services resulted in patient harm. That's seven times higher than the percentage of hospital medication errors that caused harm overall, or 1.67 percent. Several factors were said to contribute to the higher rate of risk. These include the fact that patients often receive potentially dangerous drugs, such as dyes, sedatives and blood thinners. Also, radiology departments are high traffic areas with patients arriving from all parts of the hospital, which increases the risk of miscommunication. The breakdown in communication can lead to errors such as patients receiving the wrong drug, the wrong dose of a drug, or not getting the drug at all. The researchers reviewed 823,268 medication errors that were voluntarily reported by 315 hospitals.