Tag: Patient Safety

Awareness, Safety
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Facts and Tips for Patient Safety Awareness Week

Patient Safety Awareness Week is an annual recognition event intended to encourage everyone to learn more about healthcare safety. Patient safety is about preventing and reducing harmful medical incidents that lead to adverse effects. Studies suggest that as many as 400,000 deaths occur in the United States each year as a result of errors or preventable harm. While not every case of harm results in death, they can cause a long-term impact on the patient’s physical health, emotional health, financial well-being, or family relationships. Preventable harm is expected to cost the U.S. and European healthcare systems $383.7 billion. The bulk […]

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Safety
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How To Practice Patient Safety As A Patient

Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in healthcare through the prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of incidents that lead to adverse effects. In 2016, such occurrences cost the U.S. and European healthcare systems $317.93 billion and are expected to rise to $383.7 billion by 2022. The bulk of these costs are directly associated with additional medical expenses, followed by increased mortality rates and loss of productivity. When indirect costs are accounted for, the estimated economic impact skyrockets to nearly $1 trillion annually.    Data indicates that the average cost per incidence of preventable harm is approximately $58,776 per […]

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Awareness, Diabetes, Health, Medicine Safety, NeedyMeds, Safety
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Website Highlights Safe Disposal Options for Used Needles & Sharps

More and more communities across the country are encountering a commonly overlooked public health and safety issue: improper needle and sharps disposal. “Sharps” is a medical term for devices with sharps points or edges that can puncture or cut skin. Examples of sharps are needles, syringes, lancets, auto injectors, epinephrine and insulin pens, infusion sets, and connection needles/sets. The group of people who are put in the most danger by improper sharps disposal are environmental service workers – janitors, housekeepers, waste and recycling workers and sewage treatment workers. When a needle is tossed directly into the trash, it has the […]

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Safety
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How to Safely Dispose of Needles

NeedyMeds is pleased to announce our latest partnership with SafeNeedleDisposal.org! In honor of this new partnership we are spotlighting this week’s blog post on the safe disposal of needles.   Needle disposal is a public health and safety issue that is commonly overlooked. The problem is that there are limited options for safe disposal of needles which leads to dangerous situations for the public – including injury and the spread of infectious disease. Additionally, information about safely disposing of syringes and needles is difficult to come by and often misunderstood. Each year “approximately 9 million syringe users will administer at […]

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Medicine Safety, Prescription Drugs
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New Ways Criminals are Trying to Prey on American Consumers

Educated patients have known for years that randomly buying their medications from websites they find on Google can be dangerous.  The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy recently surveyed online pharmacies and found that 97% of them aren’t safe for Americans to order their medication from. Additionally, the past two years has seen an influx of counterfeits into the United States as fake drug wholesalers have begun bombarding small clinics and physicians with direct sales tactics promising unrealistic discounts.   Three separate shipments of a fake version of a cancer drug have been found in the United States in the last […]

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Welcome to the NeedyMeds Voice! We look forward to presenting you with timely, provocative pieces on healthcare reform, patient advocacy, medication and healthcare access, and other health-related news. Our goals are to educate, enlighten, and elucidate; together, we will try to make sense of the myriad and ongoing healthcare-related changes in the U.S. today.