Wellpoint to stop paying for 11 preventable errors
Patient Safety Monitor Alert
April 9, 2008
Following in the footsteps of the Centers for U.S. Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Wellpoint, one of the US's largest health insurers, has agreed to stop paying for 11 medical errors that it considers preventable, reports the Indianapolis Star. The CMS announced in 2007 that by October 2008 it would not pay for certain preventable errors.
Wellpoint, which insures 35 million people nationally, has decided to start with the same list that the CMS is using. This includes not paying for three types of surgical errors: Wrong site-surgery, wrong-patient surgery, and wrong-type of surgery on correct patient. The list also includes eight events for which Wellpoint will not pay additional costs once the errors have happened. These include objects left in the body post surgery, air embolisms, blood incompatibility, catheter-associated blood stream infections, pressure ulcers, vascular catheter-associated infections, chest infections post coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and injuries resulting from hospital care.
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