Big insurers to stop paying for ‘never events’

Aetna, WellPoint, and other big insurers are moving to ban payments for care resulting from serious errors, including operating on the wrong limb or giving a patient incompatible blood. The companies are following the lead of Medicare, which announced last summer that starting this October, it will no longer pay the extra cost of treating bed sores, falls, and six other preventable injuries and infections that occur while a patient is in a hospital.

Private insurers are looking first at banning reimbursements for only the gravest mistakes. But health-insurance executives say it is only a matter of time before the industry also stops paying for some of the more common and less clear-cut problems that Medicare is tackling, such as hospital-acquired catheter infections or blood poisoning. “I’d rather have the cudgel in place first than push the list too far,” says Aetna President Mark Bertolini.

Insurers Stop Paying for Care Linked to Errors [Via The Wall Street Journal]

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