The Leapfrog Group, comprising the country’s largest corporate purchasers of health care, called on hospitals to commit to its new Never Events policy when a patient experiences one of the National Quality Forum’s 28 serious reportable events in a hospital facility. “Never events” are rare medical errors, such as surgery performed on the wrong body part, a foreign object being left inside a patient after surgery, or an infant discharged to the wrong person. Hospitals that adopt the policy will be given public recognition through the 2007 Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey, said the organization.
When a never event occurs, Leapfrog is asking hospitals to apologize to the patient and/or family; report the event to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, a state reporting program, or a patient safety organization; perform a root cause analysis; and waive all costs directly related to the never event and not seek reimbursement from the patient or a third-party payer.
“We agree that these ‘never’ events should never occur and we are working hard to make sure they are not only rare, but more and more rare each day,” Richard Umbdenstock, president-elect of the American Hospital Association, told the Chicago Tribune. “We certainly agree that when they do occur, and it can be tragic, we need to reach out and make it right. They are very much doing this already.” Although Umbdenstock said he thought most hospitals would support the Leapfrog Group’s policy, he also stated that hospitals and patients would have to arrive at their own resolution of a never event, since each case would be unique.
