"$4B per year" AE cost to UK health service

The cost to the UK's National Health Service of prescription drug-related adverse events is nearly L2.0 billion ($3.99 billion), according to a report in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. The figure was produced by what the Guardian described as a "center-left think-tank," Compass. Unusually, the claim was made concerning research which the group announced it will publish in the fall.

However, Compass has been described as more of a caucus within the governing UK Labour Party than a research center and the group admitted it had calculated the total of almost L1.90 billion spent on medicine-related adverse events, on the basis of an estimated 6.5% of NHS hospital admissions and combined it with the average daily cost of an eight-day hospital stay.

The author of the Compass' report, Zoe Gannon, said that the cost of treating patients with adverse events "could pay for 10,000 new midwives and could easily cover the estimated cost of combating MRSA [methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] infections.