Hospitals can be dangerous to yourt health

"Far and away, the most serious hospital risk is a medication error," says Carolyn Clancy, MD, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Md. "All it takes is for someone to miss a decimal point and you could have a life-threatening mistake." A 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine estimated that every year, there are 450,000 injuries resulting from medication errors in hospitals, and perhaps many more that are unreported.