The High ROI of Never Event Prevention

In 2007, patient falls and pressure ulcers accounted for nearly 70% of all of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid’s (CMS) recorded “never events” in US hospitals.

Never events are select hospital acquired conditions defined by CMS as treatment errors that are 100% preventable.  As a consequence, CMS has mandated that they will refuse to reimburse hospitals for any never event expenses.  Additionally, hospitals are prohibited from passing the costs on to the patient.

In 2007, the last year CMS reimbursed hospitals for never events, pressure ulcers cost CMS $43,180 per occurrence and falls with injury cost $33,894 per occurrence. Thus, in 2007 pressure ulcers cost over $11.1 billion and falls cost over $6.5 billion.

Breaking Down the Return On Investment

According to the American Hospital Association (AHA) there were 951,045 registered beds in the United States in 2008. Thus US hospitals recorded approximately 0.27 dangerous pressure ulcers per bed per year on average, and approximately 0.20 falls with injury per bed per year on average. Do the math, and the total cost sum of pressure ulcers and falls with injury was about $19,032 per bed each year.

Due to the high cost of never events, investment in never event prevention provides a great return.  Investment in technologies and policies that particularly target patient falls and pressure ulcers return especially high value.

Investments that limit patient falls and pressure ulcers even slightly pay off handsomely.  For example, a 25% reduction in falls/pressure ulcers at $19,032 annually per bed results in savings of $4,748 per bed annually. For a medium sized 200 bed hospital, that’s $951,600 per year.