Why do Pharmacy companies make up similar names of medications, or shape identical bottles of different drugs?

Why do Laboratories put names on lab-tests that sound almost exactly like something else, but the test is completely different?

And according to Nat-Pat-Sfty-Goals, we are supposedly trying to reduce medical errors?
Ya, right!

Naming Game

Sound alike, look alike, drugs
Also known as S.A.L.A.D,
Down in Pharmacy central
That's the name of their favorite ballad.

But what about those lab tests
Too many, sound the same,
Look alike and sound alike
Is the Lab-test naming game.

The latest silly example
Of Lab-test naming confusion,
“Anti-X-A Heparin”
Is focused on the infusion,
Of the Heparin drip we know so well
To be measured a different way,
Not to be confounded by that other test
The one known as, “Anti X-A”.

How many times do I predict
The test will be ordered incorrectly?
No one is willing to take that bet
In hindsight, circumspectly.

Fibril_late;
10/20/11