Greedy Trial Lawyer
No Medicare Payments For "Avoidable Hospital Associated Complications"?
Category: News Defused
Stand back. AHAC's are about to debut. Your government is trying to save some of your money. Medicare has a novel idea, but it likely will open Pandora's Box.
Medlaw.com reports the following:
Medicare has issued a proposal that will stop paying for avoidable hospital associated complications (AHAC's), and with it, major private insurance companies are expected to follow the lead and cut out payments for this common and expensive complications. The denial process will alert patients to the fact that their condition resulted from hospital error, and can be expected to increase malpractice claims for such complications and create a legal argument that these issues are automatically malpractice. The issues targeted by the plan include:1. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections.
2. Bed sores.
3. Objects left in after surgery.
4. Air embolism, or bubbles, in bloodstream from injection.
5. Patients given incompatible blood type.
6. Bloodstream staph infection.
7. Ventilator-associated pneumonia.
8. Vascular-catheter-associated infection.
9. Clostridium difficile-associated disease (gastrointestinal infections).
10. Drug-resistant staph infection.
11. Surgical site infections.
12. Wrong surgery.
13. Falls
The proposed regulations are open for comment and are planned to take effect in October 2008.
Who decides what is an avoidable hospital associated complications? Is the hospital always legally responsible for the wrong surgery or objects left in after surgery or a fall? What is the patient/victim to do about the billing he or she will likely receive from the hospital for the care necessitated by each scenario? [Will hospitals just waive their legal right to payment from patients?] Why are these items any different from delayed or erroneous diagnoses by doctors which cause many hospitalizations and lengthen others and, yet, are fully paid by Medicare? What about misfilled prescriptions which sometimes cause unnecessary hospitalizations?
My initial reaction to the Medicare proposal: this dog won't hunt.
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