A report out this week from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that 1.5 million Americans are being injured each year as a result of prescribing mistakes related to medications. The errors are costing more than $3.5 billion each year. The report also suggests that 7000 people continue to die each year as a result of wrongly prescribed or errors related to medications.

According to the report, mistakes in giving drugs in hospitals are so common that, on average, a patient can expect to be subject to a medication error each day he or she remains hospitalized.

The report found errors to not only be harmful and prevalent, but very costly as well. The added expense of having to provide health care for drug related injuries occurring in hospitals alone was given a conservative estimate of $3.5 billion a year.

At the root of these findings is the suggestion that if medical doctors adopted the practice of electronically prescribing medicines there would be less risks involved and therefore less injuries.

According to one estimate given in the report, it was believed that four out of every five US adults will use prescription medications, over-the-counter drugs, or dietary supplements of some sort in any given week. It was also suggested that nearly one third of adults will take five or more different medications each week.

One could argue that if Americans adopted healthcare practices that were less relying on daily doses of medications (and therefore less prescriptions) and instead were more focused on exercise, good nutrition, and chiropractic care, we would be far better off both financially and as a healthier nation.