Medication Errors In Atlanta Hospitals

We have previously written about the dangers of medication errors in hospitals. Recently another incident made the news because a celebrity was involved. Actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins and another child were put in serious danger when they were administered overdoses of a blood thinner. The California Department of Public Health said the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center gave the newborns 1,000 times the intended dosage of heparin. Fortunately, all three children recovered, but two needed a drug that reverses the effects of heparin.
The authorities said the “violations caused, or were likely to cause, serious injury or death to the patients who received the wrong medication,” and they faulted the hospital for its “deficient practices” around administrating the drug.
The regulators’ found that the hospital did not adequately educate staff about safe use of heparin, which it described as a “high alert, high risk” blood thinner, and that nurses sometimes failed to adequately read labels on vials of the drug.
The hospital has apologized to the patients’ families and said it made changes to prevent a recurrence, including providing more training and requiring four pharmacy workers to verify a high-alert medication before putting it in a patient care unit.
Quaid and his wife, have sued Baxter Healthcare Corp., the makers of heparin, accusing the firm of negligence in packaging different doses of the product in similar vials with blue backgrounds.
A similar dosage error killed three premature infants at an Indianapolis hospital in 2006. Three others survived overdoses.