Hospital Administrators are Challenged to Avoid Errors, Financial Penalties

Liz Perry for Leaders in Healthcare – Feb. 28, 2008

Beginning October 1, Medicare will no longer pay hospitals for errors they could have prevented. These include: catheter-caused urinary tract infections, injuries from falls, and leaving objects in the body after surgery. Hospitals bill the injured patient for those extra costs either. Next year, Medicare plans to add ventilator-caused pneumonia and drug-resistant staph infections to this list

Medicare currently insures about 44 million elderly and disabled people, and this number will continue to increase in years to come. The new no-pay policies are estimated to save the government about $190 million over five years.

Private insurance giants like Aetna are following in Medicare’s footsteps, and are now expecting hospitals to absorb the cost of serious errors. The American Hospital Association is urging members to voluntarily quit billing for treatment of serious errors, and hospitals in a number of states across the country have announced they will.

What does this mean for the hospitals? Qualified administrators are needed to establish and enforce practices that will eliminate errors, lowering costs and increasing patient care quality.