Study Shows Hospitals Lose Millions Yearly Due to Preventable Patient Safety Errors

A recent study by the Healthcare Management Council, Inc. (HMC) found that US hospitals stand to save millions of dollars per year by eliminating preventable patient safety errors.

According to the study, a 200 bed hospital is likely throwing away $2 million dollars yearly because of bed sores, patient falls, and other never events and hospital acquired conditions (HACs).

The reason hospitals stand to lose so much from these patient safety errors is because Medicare has refused to reimburse hospitals for any costs associated with a never event or HAC (click here to learn more about never events and HACs).  It is expected that soon private insurers will also deny hospitals reimbursement for these events.  Because hospitals are forbidden from passing the costs associated with these events on to the patient, they end up eating the price of care.

Patient safety incidents not cheap, and just a few events drive up the hospital bill significantly.  The most prevalent events hospitals are being denied reimbursement for, are bed sores.  HMC found that bed sore events were costing hospitals an average of $536,900 annually—at an average of $9,200 per event.

The most expensive events are Postoperative pulmonary embolisms and deep-vein thrombosis (DVT).  Although these occurred less than bed sores, the $15,500 average cost per event bumped the total annual cost of these events to $564,000 per hospital on average.

The monetary cost isn’t the bottom line.  Thousands of deaths occur in hospitals each year due to never events and HACs—events that have been deemed preventable by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).