1.5 million Americans are injured or killed by prescription drug errors each year. Prescription errors in hospitals are so common that patients are subject to drug errors each day they are hospitalized. These are the conclusions drawn by the notable Institute of Health. These errors not only cause further injury and sometimes death, they cost billions of dollar to correct. The Institute noted that many of these mistakes could be avoided if doctors used electronic prescribing methods and hospitals utilized a standardized bar code system. According to the Institute, 25% of the errors are preventable.