This sounds insane, and it is: Refusing payment for hospital drug errors

On Feb. 14, the Boston Globe described a study by my esteemed colleague Dr. David Bates that revealed that one in ten patients had serious preventable drug errors during their treatment at six selected community hospitals in Massachusetts.

Today the Globe published my letter in response, under the heading "Put hospitals on path to improvement:"

To the Editor:
The article is shocking. Adding insult to all these injuries is the fact that patients pay for these errors. Health insurers pay the hospitals as billed, and insurers build in all the costs when they set our insurance premiums.

The most powerful thing we can do as patients is to urge our insurers not to pay for hospital errors that we suffer. Insurers could withhold payment to the hospital, which would send the hospital the right message. Otherwise, given the reimbursement system, hospitals could benefit financially for additional days of hospital care that were incurred because of an error. (This sounds insane, and it is, as I know all too well from my work in patient safety.)

Consumers must demand safer hospital care. Strangely, this could be the best way to get it.

Browse for similar stories in our index at the very bottom of this page, or read a story on pending legislation to report and reduce hospital errors.

Handwriting on the Wall, continued: A medication error

Reader Kate Gladstone comments on Armando's Castellanos' story:

Among the hospitals that call me in to prevent medication errors (by
giving handwriting classes to the doctors), a fairly high percentage
claim to have "computerized everything" 1 or 2 or 5 or more years ago
… yet they still have handwriting problems, because of a crucial 1% to
5% of handwritten documentation that just won't go away.

Doctors in "totally computerized" hospitals still scribble Post-Its to
slap onto the walls of the nurse's station, still scrawl notes on the
cuffs of their scrubs during impromptu elevator/corridor conferences
with colleagues … and, most of all, doctors with computer systems
often have the ward clerks operate the computers, use the Net, or
whatever: working, of course, from the doctors' illegible handwriting.
Bad doctor handwriting, incorrectly deciphered by ward clerks using
the computer for any purpose, thereby enters the computerized medical
record.

And what happens when disasters like Hurricane Katrina (or tsunamis)
knock out a hospital's network? More than one hospital, during
Katrina, lost its generator, its electric power — and therefore its
computer system — for the duration. Even the computer-savviest staff
in these disaster zones had to return to handwriting. Let's hope they
wrote legibly.


Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone -

handwritingrepair@gmail.com - telephone 518/482-6763
Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest
http://learn.to/handwrite
325 South Manning Boulevard
Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA