Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

The House March 12 overwhelmingly passed patient safety legislation virtually identical to a bill it overwhelmingly passed last year.

Under H.R. 663, hospitals and other healthcare institutions would report medical errors and “near-misses” to public and/or private groups certified by the Department of Health and Human Services as “patient safety organizations.” PSOs would analyze the information and report back to providers on causes of the errors and ways to redesign systems to avoid them.

To facilitate the open flow of information and analysis, any “patient safety work product” developed by providers and PSOs would be privileged; it would not be subject to subpoena or discoverable in malpractice suits or any other civil or criminal proceeding, and could not be submitted as evidence in such proceedings. PSWP would not be subject to Freedom Of Information Act requests and could not be used in accreditation actions against providers.

HR 663 would authorize HHS to promulgate voluntary national standards for the compatibility of health information-technology systems.

The bill would authorize $25 million in grants in both FY 2004 and FY 2005 to help hospitals and other providers develop electronic prescribing and implement IT improvements.

As they did last year, backers of H.R. 663 maintain that the bill only protects from disclosure information developed explicitly for the PSO process. But some Senate Democrats, notably Edward Kennedy (MA), still say they’re concerned that the legislation might impinge injured patients’ access to medical records and other treatment information.

Kennedy and backers of the House approach actively sought a compromise in the last Congress, and Food and Drug Administration head Mark McClellan said earlier this year that those efforts had continued with promising results. The early House action this time around leaves plenty of time for compromise efforts to bear fruit.