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Minnesota hospitals will not charge insurers and patients for their own errors

Patient Financial Services Weekly Advisor, September 28, 2007

In healthcare, there is rarely a redo free of charge. A hospital bills insurers and patients for procedures resulting from its own mistakes.

Minnesota is changing that.

The state's hospitals have agreed to stop charging patients and insurance companies for medical errors, according to a report in the Star-Tribune.

Minnesota is the first state to adopt such a policy, which state officials hope many states follow.

Some Minnesota hospitals began the practice of not charging insurers and patients for their own errors in 2004, when the state forced them to begin reporting 27 types of mistakes or preventable conditions. Recently, all hospitals agreed to pay for their own mistakes themselves.

"We hope more states follow our lead," Gov. Tim Pawlenty says in the Star-Tribune.

Among the 27 mistakes and preventable errors are: leaving in a needle or sponge during surgery; operating on the wrong body part or wrong patient; burns; falls; serious medication errors; festering bedsores.

Minnesota hospitals in 2006 reported 154 such problems out of 8 million patients, according to the Minnesota Hospital Association.

"It's not a lot of money, but it's the right thing to do," says Eileen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Council of Health plans, which helped draft the policy.

Bruce Rueben, president of the Minnesota Hospital Association, tells the Star Tribune patients should not have to pay for errors made by hospitals.

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

To read the story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, click here.

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