The Burden of Preventable Adverse Drug Events on Hospital Stay and Healthcare Costs in Japanese Pediatric Inpatients: The JADE Study

BACKGROUND: Adverse drug events (ADEs) are a burden to the healthcare system. Preventable ADEs, which was ADEs due to medication errors, could be reduced if medication errors can be prevent or ameliorate. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the burden of preventable ADEs on the length of hospital stay (LOS) and costs, and estimated the national burden of preventable ADEs in pediatric inpatients in Japan. METHODS: We analyzed data from the Japan Adverse Drug Events (JADE) study on pediatric patients and estimated the incidence of preventable ADEs and associated extended LOS. Costs attributable to extended LOS by preventable ADEs were calculated using a national statistics database and we calculated the effect of preventable ADEs on national cost excess. RESULTS: We included 907 patients with 7377 patient-days. Among them, 31 patients (3.4%) experienced preventable ADEs during hospitalization. Preventable ADEs significantly increased the LOS by 14.1 days, adjusting for gender, age, ward, resident physician, surgery during hospitalization, cancer, and severe malformation at birth. The individual cost due to the extended LOS of 14.1 days was estimated as USD 8258. We calculated the annual extra expense for preventable ADEs in Japan as USD 329 676 760. Sensitivity analyses, considering the incidence of preventable ADEs and the length of hospital stay, showed that the expected range of annual extra expense for preventable ADEs in Japan is between USD 141 468 968 and 588 450 708. CONCLUSION: Preventable ADEs caused longer hospitalization and considerable extra healthcare costs in pediatric inpatients. Our results would encourage further efforts to prevent and ameliorate preventable ADEs.