Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell Says Medicaid Will No Longer Pay For Treatment Of Preventable Hospital Errors

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Jan 2008 - 12:00 PDT

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The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare last week launched a program to identify and stop Medicaid payments for care related to preventable hospital errors, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The state also will prohibit hospitals from charging patients for such errors. Under the policy, which Gov. Ed Rendell (D) announced on Tuesday, the department will examine hospital bills for 27 so-called "never events," such as operating on the wrong patient, medication errors that result in death or disability, and bad blood transfusions. The department will assess each case to see if the event was preventable and resulted in significant harm to the beneficiary.

The initiative will apply to care given at acute care hospitals since Jan. 14 (Goldstein, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/23). The policy does not apply to managed care organizations that enroll Medicaid beneficiaries. However, Stacey Witalec, a spokesperson for the department, said that the state expects those companies to adopt similar policies. Officials did not provide an estimate of how much money the program would save the state's Medicaid program.

The Rendell administration worked with the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania to develop the initiative, which is similar to a Medicare program that will begin in October (Raffaele, AP/Contra Costa Times, 1/22). The Pennsylvania program is part of a broader health care plan announced by Rendell in January 2007 that seeks to improve the quality of care, reduce errors, eliminate hospital-acquired infections and increase access to affordable health care for all state residents.

In related news, Rendell on Tuesday said that 29,000 people on a waiting list for the state's low-cost health insurance program, adultBasic, would receive coverage (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/23).

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