Nursing Assistant Resources On The Web

More than ever, medical errors and poor nursing care will become a very hot topic in the near future.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — In a significant policy change, Bush administration officials say that Medicare will no longer pay the extra costs of treating preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals, a move they say could save lives and millions of dollars.

Private insurers are considering similar changes, which they said could multiply the savings and benefits for patients.

Under the new rules, to be published next week, Medicare will not pay hospitals for the costs of treating certain “conditions that could reasonably have been prevented.”

Among the conditions that will be affected are bedsores, or pressure ulcers; injuries caused by falls; and infections resulting from the prolonged use of catheters in blood vessels or the bladder.

In addition, Medicare says it will not pay for the treatment of “serious preventable events” like leaving a sponge or other object in a patient during surgery and providing a patient with incompatible blood or blood products.

“If a patient goes into the hospital with pneumonia, we don’t want them to leave with a broken arm,” said Herb B. Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The new policy — one of several federal initiatives to improve care purchased by Medicare, at a cost of more than $400 billion a year — is sending ripples through the health industry.

It also raises the possibility of changes in medical practice as doctors hew more closely to clinical guidelines and hospitals perform more tests to assess the condition of patients at the time of admission.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that patients develop 1.7 million infections in hospitals each year, and it says those infections cause or contribute to the death of 99,000 people a year — about 270 a day.
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Consumer groups welcomed the change. And while hospital executives endorsed the goal of patient safety, they said the policy would require them to collect large amounts of data they did not now have.

Lisa A. McGiffert, a health policy analyst at Consumers Union, hailed the rules.

“Hundreds of thousands of people suffer needlessly from preventable hospital infections and medical errors every year,” Ms. McGiffert said. “Medicare is using its clout to improve care and keep patients safe. It’s forcing hospitals to face this problem in a way they never have before.”

Christine K. Cahill, a registered nurse who used to inspect hospitals for the California Department of Public Health, said: “This is a great start. Infection-control specialists have been screaming for 20 years that federal and state officials should pay more attention to this problem because hospital infections hurt patients and cost money.”
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The rules, first reported in The Star-Ledger of Newark, carry out a directive from Congress included in a 2006 law. When they were proposed in May, consumer advocates said they feared that some hospitals might charge patients for costs that Medicare refused to pay.

But that is forbidden. “The hospital cannot bill the beneficiary for any charges associated with the hospital-acquired complication,” the final rules say.

Trust me. Someone WILL pay these bills. Hospitals are great at shifting costs; they will simply charge more for services and we will all pay for the errors of a few and the ensuing costs to care for the results. That pressure sore? Think about all the time, the dressing changes and wound care…the products…everyone will pay. But we won’t see any benefit from this. Less money coming into the system will mean even less money for wages and benefits. It’s strange how these rules are thought out. IF there were enough nurses and aides to begin with, pressure sores wouldn’t be prevalent now would they? If OR nurses weren’t so rushed, there wouldn’t be so many errors; same with medications and other things. AND if we all just washed our hands more often, and wore gloves with each contact with patients/residents, these infection rates would go down. It’s pretty elementary.