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Blue Cross of MA, state to halt payment for errors

Quality Improvement Monitor, June 20, 2008

The state of Massachusetts and its largest private health insurer will no longer pay hospitals and physicians who make egregious medical errors, such as operating on the wrong body part, The Boston Globe reported this week.

The new policies of the Bay State and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, which are aimed at improving quality, could potentially affect the care of about 4 million people, the paper said. In all, the state and insurer would halt payment for 28 errors.

No other state "has taken the level of leadership on this issue that Massachusetts is demonstrating," said Leah Binder, CEO of the Leapfrog Group, told the Globe. "The reason we think this is important is that it creates an incentive for hospitals to put more resources toward creating a culture of safety, to doing the kinds of things that are necessary to prevent human error from taking the lives of patients."

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