It’s official - the Bush administration has had enough. They are tired of getting pushed around by the current system governing our country’s medical payment system. They say that the time has come where we stop paying for quantity, and start paying for quality.

Starting this month, Medicare will no longer pay hospitals for treatment stemming from “reasonably preventable” errors. Under this new rule, Medicare maintains that they will no longer reimburse hospitals for the treatment of certain conditions that could have been reasonably prevented, or injuries that result from improper care or medical mistakes. These conditions include:

• Falls

• Pressure Ulcers

• Serious Bed Sores

• Mediastinitis, an infection that can develop after heart surgery

• Urinary Tract Infections that result from improper catheter use

• Vascular Infections that result from improper catheter use

The rule also includes certain “never events” - that is, events that regulators feel should never happen. These events include, but are not limited to:

• Objects left in the body during surgery

• Air embolisms

• Blood incompatibility

And that’s not even the end of it. According to the rule, hospitals will not even be allowed to charge patients directly for care related to their medical errors. Several large insurance companies, including Aetna, Cigna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, have already issued similar rules. And certain states have recently announced that their Medicaid programs will not pay for preventable medical errors or “never events.”

The goal of the plan is not to produce significant savings. Instead, supporters of the new plan hope that the rules will help restructure the medical payment system to put greater emphasis on prevention and chronic disease management, and discourage unnecessary medical treatments. In essence, making quality of care the highest priority.

There is bound to be some opposition to the new rules. While most would agree that the “never events” really should never happen, there are always going to be gray areas. For example, an injury caused by malfunctioning equipment - not the fault of the patient, yet not really the fault of the hospital either.

But think about it… If you hired someone to fix your washing machine, and they accidentally broke your dryer, would you let them bill you for fixing the dryer? Not a chance… So why wouldn’t we apply that logic to our health care system?