Starting next year, if a surgeon leaves an instrument inside a patient, Medicare won't cover the cost of fixing that mistake. Under new rules issued in the beginning of August, Medicare will no longer pay for the costs of what it considers "preventable" conditions acquired in the hospital. These include everything from certain types of hospital-acquired infections, to patients who are given transfusions with the wrong blood type, to bed sores.

USA. Aug. 19, 2007 (via ABC News)

Medicare is changing its coverage so that it will no longer pay for hospital incidents that could have been prevented, according to the New York Times.

These conditions were caused by negligence or improper medical practice, the Times reports, and the Bush administration has decided that Medicare will no longer pay the additional costs for treating them. Included are conditions and infections such as bedsores (pressure ulcers), injuries caused by falls in circumstances where they could have been prevented, and infections resulting from use of catheters for long periods.

Private insurers, too, are considering following Medicare's lead, which may cause hospital officials to place emphasis on reducing staph infections and medical errors and replacing health workers who are neglectful of patients' needs.

According to the Times, figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that almost 100,000 people a year --about 270 a day -- die in U.S. hospitals from improper treatment or neglect.

Some of procedures have been termed "serious preventable events," such as leaving a sponge in a patient during surgery or giving a transfused patient the wrong blood type. Medicare says it will no longer reimburse hospitals for these mistakes, the newspaper reports.

"If a patient goes into the hospital with pneumonia, we don't want them to leave with a broken arm," Herb B. Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the Times.

### Source: ABC News