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Minnesota hospitals to stop charging for serious medical errors

Quality Improvement Monitor, September 28, 2007

Minnesota's hospitals have agreed to stop charging patients and insurance companies for egregious medical errors, such as operating on the wrong body part, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Minnesota is the first state to adopt such a policy, which applies to 27 types of mistakes or adverse events, the paper reported.

Many hospitals in other states charge patients for treatment needed to correct medical mistakes, such as retrieving objects left behind in surgery. But not in Minnesota, Bruce Rueben, president of the Minnesota Hospital Association, told the Tribune.

"We are way ahead of the rest of the country on this," he told the paper. "We're formalizing and saying out loud this is what hospitals are going to do and have been doing."

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