Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

In a recent post in www.detnews.com, it said that following a government report that said that one in every seven hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experience medical error during their stay, Medicare's chief demanded that more steps be taken to better patient safety.

As per the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, unexpected adverse events contributed to the death of about 1.5 percent of the hospitalized patients, or 15,000 people a month.

"We have to do better," Dr. Donald Berwick, a well-known quality-care specialist, was quoted in the post as saying. CMS launched a new Medicare "innovation center" to formulate and examine strategies to enhance quality of health care and reduce costs for everyone, not just Medicare beneficiaries.

Of course with improved primary care, people would not need to be hospitalized as often, Berwick said.

It is noteworthy that a decade ago, the Institute of Medicine had cautioned that up to 98,000 people die per year from medical errors alone.Focusing on 780 Medicare patients who were hospitalized in October 2008, the new HHS report analyzed mistakes and unavoidable consequences of treatment, such as previously unknown drug allergies or medication side effects.

Of the 134,000 Medicare patients who suffered at least one adverse event during their stay, 44 percent could have been prevented, the report said.

(Editor's note: To read the post, visit: http://detnews.com/article/20101117/NATION/11170349/1020/rss09.)