Monday, October 06, 2008

New York Times demagoguery on Medicare’s never events policy

They don’t have a clue. An October 4 NYT editorial opens with two faulty assumptions:

It is good to know that hospitals will no longer profit from their mistakes under a new payment policy just inaugurated by Medicare.

As I’ve already pointed out the majority of these events are not mistakes. But even worse is the notion that hospitals actually profit from such events. Modifications of DRG payments for unplanned events are modest. For the complication of sepsis, for example, it’s a little over $3000. That doesn’t even come close to covering the cost of an episode of sepsis which, according to a 2003 estimate, costs on an average of $22,000 per case! In typical popular media style the editorial writer didn’t try to cite evidence to back up the claim. Absurd. It gets worse as you read on.

More from Kevin.

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