Medicare Says No to Paying for Mistakes

The next time a surgeon accidentally leaves a sponge inside a patient or a nurse administers the wrong type of blood in a transfusion, Medicare and the taxpayer will no longer pay to clean up the mess:

Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly and disabled, will stop paying hospitals for the extra costs of treating patients who are injured because of their own mistakes.

The federal government rolled out a program that holds back several payments from health care facilities that want to bill Medicare for the costs of the incidents that occur when patients are in their care.

Starting this week, Medicare will stop reimbursing hospitals for ten specific errors, or never events , which are supposed to be always avoided if hospital employees are cautious about their patients. These medical errors include wrong blood given in transfusions, air injected into veins and sponges left in a patient after performing a surgery.

Now if they could just get the rampant fraud in places like Miami under control . . . .