Group calls on hospitals to waive payments for "never events"

The call from an employer group builds on recent state legislation requiring the reporting of the most egregious medical errors.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Dec. 18, 2006.

A coalition of the nation's largest employers is asking hospitals in every state to adopt a policy that would prohibit billing the victims of so-called "never events" for the costs of care.

Last month's announcement from Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of the nation's largest corporations and public agencies, came soon after the National Quality Forum's revision of a 28-item list of medical errors so egregious that they should never occur, thus the term "never events." Those include operating on the wrong patient or body part, and leaving a foreign object inside a patient after surgery.

The NQF, a private organization whose members include the American Medical Association, is not involved in the Leapfrog initiative.

Leapfrog plans to recognize hospitals that adopt the policy through its 2007 Hospital Quality and Safety Survey.

Rachel Weissburg, program associate for Leapfrog, said the policy incorporates procedures that most hospitals have in place already, such as reporting the incident and performing a root-cause analysis.

Leapfrog's move to block payment was not motivated by financial reasons, Weissburg said, but was added simply because "that's the least [the hospitals] can do. We just want to make that explicit."

In 2003 Minnesota became the first state to pass a never-events law that required the reporting of every never-event occurrence. Five other states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey, also have passed similar reporting laws or policies.