A New Approach to Medical Errors
A recent editorial in the Boston Globe points out an interesting dynamic created by the Federal Government's new stance on penalizing hospitals for medical mistakes. The Medicare Against Mistakes article underlines that "The new policy may require refinement, but it puts US hospitals on notice that they have got to work harder to make sure patients do not suffer needless harm while under their care."
The article discusses recent legislation that requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to rule that Medicare will no longer pay for mistakes that are clearly a hospital's fault. It is no secret that medical errors carry tremendous costs to the healthcare system. In fact, a conservative estimate of the financial impact of medical errors is $3.5B per year.
One of the most common and troubling medical errors discussed in the article is hospital-acquired infections.
The severity of this specific medical error is alarming.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that patients develop 1.7 million infections a year in hospitals and that 99,000 die as a result."
That's a huge number (for context, there are only a few sports complexes in the country that could house 99,000 people).With some exceptions, hospitals have been reluctant to release data on infection rates, let alone lay out a strategy to deal with the problem. That's not to say that hospitals are not acutely aware of it - most hospitals have programs designed to reduce the incidence and severity of hospital acquired infections. Hospitals can argue till the cows come home on the veracity or fairness of comparative medical error rates. However, it seems indisputable that this legislation and its mandated drive towards transparency should be a positive influence in combating this problem. Facing the loss of Medicare money should force the hospital admnistratives to act.
I guess the true test will be in how this policy impacts costs to the healthcare system, and most importantly, the quality of care administered to patients.
(For more reading on medical errors and one clinician's approach to this problem, check out chapter one from Atul Qawande's book "Better.")
