The NHS is spending nearly £2bn a year treating patients who have had an adverse reaction to drugs prescribed for them by doctors, according to new figures from the centre-left thinktank Compass.
The amount of money spent on hospital care for those given the wrong medicine or who have reacted badly to a drug could pay for 10,000 new midwives or easily cover the estimated cost of combating MRSA infections, says Compass.
The health minister Dawn Primarolo confirmed to the organisation that 6.5% of hospital admissions are a result of an adverse reaction. Total admissions in 2006 were 16 million, which means that 1,040,000 patients were there as a result of the drugs they were prescribed.
Compass bases its calculation on an average stay of eight days in hospital at a cost of £228 a day. That puts the annual NHS bill at £1,896,960,000 just for those admitted with ill-effects.
It does not include those patients who had a bad reaction to their medicines while they were in hospital.
If that cost were added in, the bill would top £2bn.
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