Medicare Expands List of 'No-Pay' Hospital Conditions

These 3 new items could sure leave some questions on the table and issues could be cloudy. These 3 should be evaluated on an individual patient basis and not an overall listing, after all one patient could be allergic to most medications used for blood clots as a simple example. BD

The list of hospital treatments that Medicare wont pay for is growing, but not by as much as the feds initially suggested it might. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said last year it would stop paying to treat certain complications it said were preventable with good care. (We described the initial list in this post.) Earlier this year, CMS said it could add nine more complications to the list. CMS said yesterday that after considering public comments, it was adding three conditions:

Blood clots in patients after surgery for knee and hip replacements

Surgical site infections after certain elective procedures, including some orthopedic surgeries and bariatric surgery

Certain major problems that result from failing to control blood sugar levels after a patient is hospitalized