Medicare Won’t Pay

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) stated it was taking steps to “improve the accuracy of Medicare’s payment under the acute care hospital inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS), while providing additional incentives for hospitals to engage in quality improvement efforts.”

As of January 2009, Medicare ceased reimbursing hospitals for costs incurred due to “preventable” conditions, mistakes, and infections.  Hospitals will be solely responsible for the cost of additional treatment and may not pass the costs on to the patient.

Conditions no longer covered will include air embolism, bed sores, falls, removal of objects inadvertently left inside patients after an operation, mediastinitis after coronary artery bypass graft surgery, vascular catheter-associated infections, and certain catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI).

Of all these, the area of greatest impact is in the realm of hospital-acquired infections, which affect up to two million patients annually.  Further, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hospital-acquired infections kill nearly 100,000 Americans annually.

Hospital-acquired catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) reported in 2008 reached one million cases—over 40% of all hospital-acquired infections—at a cost of over $3 billion.

During a conference call with reporters on Thursday, July 23, 2009, President Obama’s budget director,  Peter Orszag, noted that 20% of Medicare patients who are discharged from hospitals must be readmitted within 30 days.  To illustrate the importance of expanding coverage and reducing costs, he pointed out that a mere 0.15 percent reduction in Medicare costs would render savings sufficient to offset the entire Social Security deficit. 

The director of Consumers Union’s Stop Hospital Infections campaign noted that the “new rules are a good beginning for Medicare to use its clout to mobilize hospitals to improve care and keep patients safe.”

Poiesis Medical, seeking to be part of the solution to a problem plaguing our hospitals and other healthcare facilities,  has developed the Duette, a new generation catheter that directly addresses one of the major shortcomings of the current line of catheters—trauma to the mucosal lining of the bladder resulting from catheterization that can lead to CAUTI.

Poiesis Medical
INNOVATION…PREVENTION…EDUCATION