Letter: Hospitals will pay for their mistakes

I would like to comment on a Feb. 19 article regarding hospitals. It said that in Washington, D.C., they wanted to make hospitals pay for their mistakes.

The article explained such things like half the people in the hospital have catheters in, and some of them don't even have to have them. Then, the hospitals don't keep track of who has a catheter, which can cause urinary tract infections. Even when the hospital makes a preventable error, it can still be reimbursed.

Beginning in October, Medicare will no longer pay those extra care costs for eight preventable hospital errors, including injuries from falls and leaving objects in the body after surgery. Next year, Medicare will add two more errors, ventilator-caused pneumonia and drug-resistant staph infections. Medicare insures about 44 million elderly and disabled people and hopes to save the government about $190 million over the next five years.

I think this is a good idea, and I hope that it will at least bring down the amount of errors and mistakes the hospitals make. If they don't, come October, the hospitals will have to pay for it. Not the insurance companies and especially not the patients, which matter the most.

Erica Cook

Browns Valley