Medicare to NOT pay for hospital mistakes

[cougarnurse]

Heard this on the news today, and saw the article on Yahoo News:
Medicare won't pay for hospital mistakes - Yahoo! News
Does anyone have any comments? Opinions?

'Cat'

[tenexe]

Wow:

read the article and it is very frightening. The concept is great in theory but it has some major problems. First of all, who is it that is deciding what is completely avoidable. Hopefully not the people that came up with this list. Yes I agree with instruments left in a patient. Falls are never fully avoidable, You can use perfect technique to start an IV and it can still get infected. The same with a foley.

This is a frightening example of more bureaucracy being injected into the medical system. We already have to jump through hoops for JCHAO, State Accredidation, and so on.

In short, this will have very little effect on the outcome of these issues. It will just be more things that are going to be dumped on the nurses. Soon hospitals will have nurses being required to turn patients every 15 minutes to prevent a bedsore.

Anyway not to start controversy but for those that favor universal healthcare....Heres a good preview of what you can look forward too.

[cassioo]

I agree it's good in theory and I don't think the patient or whatever insurance should pay for an out and out mistake but as tenexe said who decides what is avoidable and what isn't......I work with lots of spinals and a few spinal headaches that require a blood patch it's one of those complications you don't want or plan to have but it does happen.