“CMS NEVER EVENTS”

Thesis Statement

Despite their stated purpose of upholding safety and promoting improvement of quality patient care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid CMS “Never” events has adopted unfair principles of reimbursement that pose great difficulties for the health providers. Firstly, it has not considered the unpreventable and unforeseeable nature of certain health conditions which are inherent risks of hospital admissions. Secondly, it has evaluated health care providers as reflections of “increased malpractice actions” without recognizing that the events that they have regarded as events that should never happen, could and actually do happen, regardless of precautionary measures exercised by providers. The disclosure of the adverse information to the public is potentially beneficial; however, it also casts a negative impact. The public information regarding different adverse events would help the healthcare providers in making improvements within patient's health. However, it would also make the patients to take their health related decisions on their own that would not be beneficial for the patient's health. Similarly, there is also a great concern about the disclosure of private information of the patient and the name of the healthcare centre or individual healthcare provider that would ultimately undermine the reporting practice of adverse events. Thus, CMS has created a list which lacks solid grounds for establishment; thus, these events must be subjected to further review, such that health care providers are treated fairly under provisions of CMS policies.

Introduction

A review of the “To Err is Human Report” reveals that the medical errors have been one of the most prominent reason of 98,000 deaths in the United States every years. Similarly, the review has also shown that the hospital payments in account of Medicare have been increased significantly due to the specified “Never Events”. The review has enabled the medical researchers to understand the policy clearly that has different impact on patients and the healthcare providers. The policy introduced by the Medicaid and Medicare centre affects the patient and health care providers differently in terms of its benefits. The healthcare providers are more affected with respect to the policy as compared to the patients as the healthcare centers are now obliged to pay for the medical errors for which the patients were insured previously. Thus, this policy has different loopholes that do not make it very attractive for the patients and healthcare providers.

Attention towards unchartered medical errors that are considered to be unfair in their practice has been raised during the past decades through the 1999 “To Err is Human Report”, in which it has sparked interests and arguments across concerned parties including the government, health care systems and providers, physicians, and patients. The review has also presented a detailed presentation of the contents of the report, with specific attention drawn towards the argument of promoting a better health care system for America through identification of negative impacts of medical errors.

Findings of Report

Cost reimbursement as a method of payment for health care services began to decline in the early 1980s in favor of other ...