Medicare seeks to deny payments on nine more conditions

WASHINGTON – New rules proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would add nine conditions to its list of preventable problems and hospital-acquired complications that Medicare will not pay hospitals to treat.
Last August, CMS said it would stop paying hospitals for treating problems that “could reasonably have been prevented,” and it barred the facilities from billing patients for treatment of hospital-acquired complications.
The initial list included three “never events” – objects left in the body during surgery, air embolisms and blood incompatibility – as well as falls, urinary-tract infections related to improper use of catheters, pressure ulcers, catheter-related vascular infections, and mediastinitis, an infection that can develop after heart surgery.
Now CMS wants to add surgical-site infections after certain elective procedures; legionnaire’s disease (a type of pneumonia); extreme blood sugar derangement; collapsed lungs; delirium; ventilator-associated pneumonia; deep-vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism; bloodstream infections; and clostridium difficile-associated gastrointestinal disease.
CMS estimated that the proposed rule would save Medicare $50 million per year. &#8226