DENVER—Gov. Bill Ritter has issued an executive order requiring the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to come up with new safety guidelines for hospitals, including ways to deny payment for avoidable medical errors.
The plan was endorsed Tuesday by the Colorado Hospital Association and the Colorado Medical Society, representing 7,000 doctors, as a way to improve the quality of patient safety and reduce medical costs.
“Improving quality is a central part of our health reform agenda as we lead Colorado forward and reshape the future of care in Colorado. A key part of improving quality is improving patient safety, and providing hospitals with an incentive—not paying for avoidable mistakes—will help accomplish that goal,” Ritter said.
The executive order directs the department to implement a policy to deny or reduce payments for inpatient hospital Medicaid claims for procedures that involve avoidable medical errors known as “serious reportable events.”
It also orders the department to work with other health organizations to help create a patient safety organization. The organization is designed to promote quality improvement, patient wellness and patient safety by analyzing serious reportable events and identifying their causes.
Ben Vernon, president of the Colorado Medical Society, said patient safety has been an issue for years, and he praised Ritter for proposing a solution.
“For years, Medicare has proposed not paying for serious medical events. We refer to them as ‘never events,’ because they’re never supposed to happen, like cutting off the wrong limb. We’re pleased at the medical society for the governor’s leadership on this,” Vernon said.
