USP advisory panel recommends standardizing Rx drug container labeling to improve patient understanding

To promote the establishment of universal standards for prescription medication labels - and to address the widespread problem of patient misinterpretation of medication instructions - an advisory panel formed by the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) recently issued a set of recommendations to bring consistency to labeling on dispensed prescription packaging.

The recommendations are patient-centered, and were developed following a call for such standards by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on the issue of health literacy. The recommendations were presented to the IOM Health Literacy Roundtable.

Limited health literacy has been cited as a major problem by the IOM, which states that 90 million adults are affected. Those with limited health literacy cannot fully benefit from much that the health and health care system have to offer, according to the IOM. One critical component to health literacy is the ability to properly understand medication instructions and important supplemental information (such as drug interactions). Poor health literacy can lead to non-adherence and medication errors, which may pose significant health risks to patients. Medication misuse results in over 1 million adverse drug events per year.