Should hospitals pay for medical mistakes?
In a move that is sure to make hospital administrators feel slightly uneasy, medicare is implementing a no-pay policy for hospital errors that could have been prevented. These eight medical mistakes are not going to be reimbursed to facilities which mess up and do things like leave objects inside people after surgery.Other insurers are starting to catch on as well. This could lead to better patient care because hospitals will want to mitigate any chance of extraneous costs -- especially if they aren't getting paid back for it. Another item on the do-not-pay list is urinary tract infections from catheters.
Twenty-five percent of patients get one of these, yet only ten percent or less of hospitals check every day to see if they're even necessary. So someone could end up with a catheter for days on end without even needing it -- which leads to urinary tract infections. Tacked on costs for these types of mistakes can run up your hospital bill by $10,000 or more! It will be interesting to see if (and how much) this improves medical care to those people in such facilities.
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America Takes It Off: Wedneday Weigh-In #2
These healthy foods cost less than a buck
