Hello, everyone. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued several proposed decision memos yesterday indicating they will not pay for wrong site/patient/surgery cases. The proposed decision memos can be found on the CMS Web site at the following links:
Surgery on the Wrong Body Part
Wrong Surgery Performed on a Patient
-Matt Phillion
In case you missed them, we've posted our October 16 and October 28 calls on critical test results. Listen to them now by clicking here
Joining us on the calls was Gayla J. Jackson, RN, BSN. Gayla is a member of the AHAP advisory board and nurse manager at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA. She has 26 years of experience in acute care and was one of the 17 advisory committee participants chosen to work on a three-year federal grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The AHRQ provided funding to The Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors along with the Massachusetts Hospital Association for the purpose of identifying, choosing, and implementing two patient safety initiatives, one of which was communicating critical test results.
I hope you all found these calls useful. And look for Gayla at the 3rd annual AHAP conference in May. She will be joining us in Las Vegas for the second year in a row.
Brian Driscoll
AHAP Director
