Beginning next year, Medicare will stop paying for some hospital mistakes.

            Under newly issued rules, the government insurance program, Medicare, will no longer pay extra to treat preventable medical complications. I believe these changes give hospitals a powerful incentive to keep patients safe. 

The changes mean no extra payments to treat patients affected by:

            Infections cause by prolonged use of catheters in the bladder or blood vessels, and surgical site                         infections after bypass surgery. 

            Injuries resulting from a fall in the hospital.

            Reactions when transfusion patients get the wrong blood type.

            Air embolism, when air invades the blood stream.

            Bed sores that patients develop while in the hospital.

            Objects, such as sponges or surgical tools, left in patients during surgery.

            These complications are considered preventable.  Medicare is moving in the right direction with these new rules.  It reverses the perverse system in place now that actually rewards hospitals for making errors.  Medicare typically pays hospitals much more for treating a patient whose hospitalization is complicated by one of the above-mentioned conditions than it would have if there were no such condition present. 

            "We think this is groundbreaking that Medicare now says, 'We're not going to pay you extra when you've done something to harm a patient,'" said Lisa McGiffert, who directs a campaign to stop hospital infections that is run by Consumers Union, based in Washington, D.C.

            I think this could make a big difference.  However, it does nothing to affect private insurers who continue to pay for hospital errors.  Nor does it prevent Medicare or other insurance payments to the physicians who may have committed the error or contributed to it.  So the physician who left an instrument in a patient can still be paid by Medicare for retrieving it in a subsequent surgery.