The Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems announced Jan. 4 that all Vermont hospitals will adopt a uniform policy to not seek payment from patients or insurers for hospital care resulting in certain rare but serious adverse events as defined by the National Quality Forum, such as wrong-site surgeries. The state joins Massachusetts and Minnesota, which have already taken this voluntary step.
The state’s hospitals have each followed their own nonpayment practices for years, but have never had a formalized process. The policy will cover eight events: surgery on wrong body part, air embolism-associated injury, surgery on wrong patient, medication error injury, wrong surgical procedure, artificial insemination/wrong donor, retention of foreign object, and incompatible blood-associated injury.
Hospitals are working to implement the policy and expect that it will be in place by fall 2008. Read the press release.
