Deficit mitigation plan passes; Eliminates Medicaid payments for never events

Early this morning the General Assembly passed HB 6602, a bill to fill the billion dollar budget gap in the current state budget year that ends June 30th. Among other provisions, the bill eliminates Medicaid payments to hospitals for “never events”. Never events are preventable errors that result in serious harm to patients. Examples include wrong site surgery, surgery on the wrong patient and mismatched blood transfusions. This provision is estimated to save the state $425,000 this year and $1.7 million annually. Medicare stopped paying for never events in October. Nationally, never events may account for 2.4 million extra hospital days, $9.3 billion in extra health care spending and 32,600 preventable deaths.
Ellen Andrews