The Cost and Causes of Medication Omission Errors: A Discussion and Literature Review

Medication errors are a constant source of strife to both patients and healthcare providers alike since time immemorial. Regardless of our level of technology, the fallible nature of humans makes medication errors a common occurrence in healthcare. One type of medication error that can often be overlooked is the omission error. An omission error occurs when a patient does not receive a medication without a justification for that omission. Few healthcare providers would argue that medication errors do not contribute greatly to hospitalization costs. Unfortunately, because most medication errors are reported on a voluntary basis, it is extremely difficult to accurately estimate the total cost (Choi, Lee, Flynn, Kim, Lee, Kim, & Suh, 2016). Estimates vary widely and are often unique to the healthcare system that they occur in due to methodology used to classify and study the data (Choi et al., 2016). Few data exist on medication omission errors (MOEs) exclusively, despite this type of error being one of the most common kind of errors (Grissinger, 2017). Two prior literature reviews on medication errors found multiple contradictory causes, however, some common themes will be explored in this review (Lassetter & Warnick, 2003; Berdot et al., 2015). This discussion and literature review examines the existing data on the causes, and the costs associated with medication omission errors.Bachelor of Scienc