The government is--for once--implementing sensible rules. Medicare has announced that it will no longer pay for a list of 10 "reasonably preventable" conditions that happen to patients who are injured by medical mistakes during their in-patient care. The list includes such errors as giving incompatible blood transfusions, second surgeries to retrieve sponges left behind by the first, serious bed sores, and infections caused by improperly placed urinary catheters. Every one of these errors can be prevented by taking an extra few seconds to double-check whatever is being done at the time it's being done. [One wonders why paying for these things was ever allowed at all.--Ed.]
Nor will the hospitals be allowed to bill patients for the costs of treating those errors. Why should a patient have to pay beyond the obvious pain and suffering caused by such errors in the first place?
It's an excellent idea. Not only will this save taxpayer money (and patient pain), it gives hospitals added incentive to make fewer mistakes. It's less expensive to implement a few additional double-checks than it is to eat the costs of actually making the mistakes. Lower costs and improved patient care. What's not to like?
I have two quibbles. First, as the New York Times report noted, hospitals will not be allowed to bill patients "directly" for the costs generated by their medical errors. They thus have the option of raising the money "indirectly." Hospitals will be able to increase their prices for everything to cover the estimated added costs of their errors. As long as it's a very small, truly across-the-board increase, however, I cannot take too much exception to that. After all, that's just putting the concept of insurance into action--by spreading the costs throughout as large a coverage pool as possible, every individual's actual expenses are held as low as possible. We all make mistakes. As long as we do everything we can to minimize them, it's not wrong to allow for the few that inevitably will still occur.
Second, the government is doing things that make sense. Can "The End" be far off when that starts happening?
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