Some medical errors, like preventable bedsores, or surgical objects left inside patients, should simply never happen. More and more, insurers are asking themselves why they should have to pay for such mistakes, letting hospitals off the hook. Medicare put its foot down first. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois follows suit with a new policy that forces hospitals to cover the costs of "never events"--mistakes that should never happen.
The idea is that forcing hospitals to absorb those costs will create an incentive to improve quality of care in a business where money typically rolls in regardless of patient outcomes and customers often feel lost in a complex, impersonal system. Employers, consumers and taxpayers are increasingly demanding that providers of medical care be held more accountable, particularly as the costs of health insurance continue to rise.
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"The broader trend is for payers to pay for good performance and not pay for extremely poor performance, which is a fundamental principle of good business practices before Adam Smith, but it's never been applied to health care," said Leah Binder, chief executive officer of The Leapfrog Group, a national coalition of large health-care purchasers such as Chicago-based Boeing Co., General Motors Corp. and General Electric Co.
"You don't have to pay for the airline ticket if the airplane crashes, and there are other examples," Binder said. "We are talking about very dramatic events that should never occur."
Makes sense to me. Let's hope more companies adopt this stance.
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