There are eight things that you must never let happen to you while you’re in hospital. If they do, health insurers say they will no longer pay out.
Tired of picking up the tab for the vast number of doctor and hospital errors that happen in American hospitals every year, health insurers have listed eight no payout errors.
Around 2 million people get an infection every year while staying in an American hospital, and a further 100,000 will die as a result.
The eight no payout errors relate to:
- air embolism
- blood incompatibility
- catheter-associated urinary tract infection
- decubitus ulcer (pressure sores)
- vascular catheter-associated infection
- surgical site infection
- mediastinitis (infection of the chest area)
- falls and trauma
- objects left in the body after surgery.
But wait. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are planning on adding a further nine errors, including the hospital-acquired killer infection C. difficile and deep vein thrombosis.
Aside from digging deep into health insurers’ profits, the errors are also going unchecked, it’s almost as though hospitals and doctors are being rewarded for making them.
(Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2008; 299: 2495-6).
Pretty sickening isn’t it, Wisdom. I can’t think of any reason why a hospital error that seriously impacts the patient’s life would not be covered. It’s as if the insurance companies are placing blame on the patient because that’s who suffers.
Yes it is, it’s a shame this is happening.