Hospital-Acquired Infection Policy Change Makes Little Impact on Medicare

CMS recently created a new policy in which it would penalize health care facilities for the extra costs of treating hospital-acquired infections. Today's Wall Street Journal (09/09/09) found that it might not make a difference:

"The government won't save much from Medicare's year-old policy of refusing to pay hospitals' extra costs to treat hospital-acquired infections and injuries such as bedsores, a new study concludes. Medicare adopted the policy last year with the goal of saving lives and cutting costs. Each year, about 1.7 million Americans acquire infections while in the hospital, and 99,000 of them die, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Medicare . . . stopped paying the extra costs of treating 10 hospital injuries and infections beginning Oct. 1, 2008"

The state of Texas is following Medicare's lead and passed legislation in the 2009 Legislature that would require state-run programs (for example, Medicaid) to adopt a similar policy. However, it is not clear when this will go into effect considering the fact that money was not appropriated to enforce this policy.