CMS Releases Hospital Error, Injury Data
By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
WASHINGTON -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began reporting hospital-specific rates of eight hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), so patients can
compare how often the nation's 4,700 hospitals make preventable medical errors.
The eight conditions are foreign object retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, vascular catheter-
associated infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, and manifestations of poor glycemic control.
"By making HAC data transparent, CMS sheds light on those preventable events where patients are harmed while seeking care," the agency said in a press release.
In 2008, Medicare stopped reimbursing hospitals for the errors, known as "never events" because they should never happen. Patients also can't be billed for treatment
of the never events.
CMS has been reporting hospital quality data since 2007 on its Hospital Compare website, which already allows for comparison of patient satisfaction measures;
adherence to protocols generally recognized as best practices of care; Medicare volumes; 30-day mortality rates rated to stays for heart attack, heart failure, and
pneumonia; and 30-day readmission rates for the three conditions.
But unlike the other data on the Hospital Compare, the HAC data is only available in a downloadable spreadsheet that lists hospitals' incidences of each of the eight
HACs, hospitals' rate per 1,000 discharges for each condition, and national HAC rates.
The data was originally scheduled to be published in September 2010 but was met with strong resistance from hospital groups such as the American Hospital
Association (AHA); the groups say that CMS never made specifics available for how it calculates the HAC rates, making "fundamental assessments of the accuracy of
capturing the incidence of these conditions" impossible to conduct.
"Hospitals continue to urge CMS not to publish these data," read a March 31 joint statement from the AHA, the Federation of American Hospitals and the Association of
American Medical Colleges.
CMS said that making public the data -- especially outcomes data -- is important because it allows patients to wisely choose a hospital and it helps hospitals ensure that
every patient gets the best care possible.
The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General estimates that 13.5% of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events
during hospitalization.