CMS Administrator Mark McClellan said this week he wants a change in Medicare's reimbursement policy in situations where "never events" are involved. Under the proposed rules changes, Medicare would no longer pay for treatment in cases where such mistakes are made. "Never events" is the industry term for the most serious medical mistakes, the errors that quite frankly should never happen in a thousand years. The list typically includes wrong site surgeries, wrong patient surgeries, mismatched blood transfusions and other potentially deadly gaffes.
- see this article [1] from Modern Healthcare
Links:
[1] http://www.modernhealthcare.com/news.cms?newsId=5166