New Medicare Rules for Hospitals Start Now
We have been hearing a lot lately about a new way that Medicare plans to keep the highest quality of procedures and services in hospitals. Most of the feedback has been excellent, except for – you guessed it – a few hospitals whose track records aren’t so great.
The new rules are considered a bold new plan to help the elderly, seniors and those who are ill. Basically, the rules have been put into place so that hospitals can and will be more careful in the way they perform everything from drawing blood to inserting a catheter to performing serious surgery.
Any and all of these procedures can cause complications such as serious infections, blood clots, pneumonia, the need for another surgery due to mistakes during the original surgery and more. Medicare has proposed not paying for these avoidable issues for a long time now, and the rules regarding the situation went into effect today.
It is important for patients to know that hospitals are not allowed to charge the patients for these types of issues that Medicare will not pay for. The reason that Medicare will not pay for them in these cases is because the hospital was at fault due to negligence or carelessness and should have to absorb the cost. It is hoped that if this happens in a particular hospital enough times, the amount of errors, problems and complications will decline.
This is a great step toward hospitals providing higher levels of service and keeping patients safer with better outcomes. Unfortunately, some states are not following Medicare’s lead and they are reimbursing certain hospitals – especially in low-income areas – anyway. Even though Medicare states that these complications and other issues are not acceptable, some areas are reimbursing them which lets them know that some losses are acceptable, service does not have to get better and in low-income areas you get what you get.
Most states are following Medicare’s lead and looking to hospitals to make the necessary changes to become safer. Hopefully this will eventually take place throughout every state in the country. Until then, depending upon where you live, you are most likely a lot safer in the hospital today than you were yesterday before the rules went into effect.
