US Healthcare leadership: oxymoron 8 – you pay for their mistakes
by Miki SaxonHealthcare providers’ attitudes towards money often make my blood boil. It’s not just insurance and drug companies and hospitals, but the financial institutions that buy the debt of the un/under insured and then charge exorbitant interest rates on it.
Of course, it’s all excused in the name of capitalism and keeping investors happy, while their advertising presents them as caring, do-the-right-thing organizations wrapped in concern for the well-being of their customers.
Obviously it’s the former that ratifies their practice of charging for errors.
Hopefully it’s starting to change. “Since last fall, hospitals in 11 states have agreed to waive fees for certain rare errors dubbed “never events” because safety experts say they should never happen at all.”
But only 28 events make the grade—here are the top five.
- Surgery on the wrong body part.
- Surgery on the wrong patient.
- Wrong surgical procedure performed on a patient.
- Object left in patient after surgery.
- Death of patient who had been generally healthy during or immediately after surgery for a localized problem.
Discharging an infant to the wrong person is way down at number nine.
So what’s the cost?
“In 2006, Medicare was billed 764 times for objects left behind after surgery, resulting in an average payment of nearly $62,000 per event [$47,368,000]. The agency was billed 33 times for patients who got the wrong blood, at an average cost of $46,000 apiece [$1,518,000], and nearly 323,000 times for the worst kind of pressure ulcers, a preventable problem, at a cost of $40,381 [$13,043,063,000] apiece.”
Read the articles and make up your own mind.
If your blood boils send them to your State and Federal Congress people.
If it doesn’t I’d love to hear why not.
Your comments—priceless
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September 21st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
[…] 2. It’s disgusting that financial institutions buy the debt of the un/under insured and then charge exorbitant interest rates on it. […]
January 16th, 2011 at 11:39 am
I see you have used my photo. THanks for the link back.
Sarah