CMS to discontinue payments for some preventable errors
Patient Safety Monitor Alert
August 22, 2007
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will stop paying hospitals to treat some preventable errors, such as hospital-acquired infections and patient falls, according to an Associated Press (AP) article.
The new rule will discontinue Medicare payments for treatment preventable errors, according to the AP:
- objects left in a patient during surgery
- blood incompatibility
- air embolism
- falls
- mediastinitis
- urinary tract infections from using catheters
- pressure ulcers
- bed sores
- vascular infections from using catheters.
More conditions may be added as soon as next year, according to CMS officials.
Some hospital officials criticized aspects of the new plan, saying the new rules would force hospitals to increase unnecessary testing to determine whether an infection was a pre-existing condition or contracted in the hospital, for example.
