Antibiotics taken for no reason, therapies started and then interrupted, therapeutic errors. The improper use of medicines is very expensive for health services and for the patients themselves. According to a report by Ims Health in the US alone, this phenomenon sends 200 billion dollars up in smoke every year.
In practice, 8% of total annual healthcare costs in the United States, not counting the avoidable hospitalizations and treatments that these errors entail. The report examines six areas contributing to this wasteful expenditure: from non-adherence to medications, delays in treatment, errors with medications, especially antibiotics, to underutilization of generics and slips in the case of multitherapy. , in this case especially in the elderly.