The Michigan Health & Hospital Association joins a growing list of hospital associations, states and payers who have adopted policies to stop billing patients for certain serious preventable errors ("never events") and hospital-acquired conditions. This follows on from Medicare's decision to cease payment from 2008, for specific hospital medical errors.

Modern Health Care

According to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, The Puget Sound Health Alliance has been granted access to Medicare information to promote public reporting on patient care in its area.

The Seattle-based alliance, stated they will use the information to enhance its Community Checkup performance report on care provided in the Puget Sound region. The group’s second checkup report is expected to be released later this year.

iHealthBeat: Washington state health insurers Regence BlueShield and Aetna are providing their members with additional online health care cost and quality information to help curb rising costs, and increase transparency.

Washington state health care providers will cease charging for preventable hospital errors under a resolution announced on Tuesday by Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) and officials of several state health care associations, reports KaiserNetwork.

Health Data Management reports Aetna Inc. will launch a pay-for-performance program for hospitals in two areas of Washington state: Puget Sound and Spokane. The national payer organization has licensed the Leapfrog Hospital Rewards Program, a national model for P4P programs from the Leapfrog Group, a Washington-based patient safety advocacy organization sponsored by employers.

Michigan Health & Hospital Association plans to launch a new Web site (www.mihospitalinform.org) Jan. 1, reports Crain's Detroit Business.

In a move towards greater health care transparency, the new site will make 146 of Michigan hospitals quality-of-care and pricing information available to the public.

Modern Healthcare reports that the Washington State Hospital Association reversed its opposition to reporting hospital-specific errors after a fierce public outcry.

As previously blogged, in September, under pressure from the hospital association, the state stopped allowing the public to view error reports from individual hospitals, instead making 28 reportable adverse events available only on an aggregate basis.

News item from KaiserNetwork: HHS on Oct. 19 filed notice to appeal an August court decision that requires the department to release Medicare physician claims data, Consumers CHECKBOOK/Center for the Study of Services announced on Monday.

According to a news item in Modern Healthcare Online today, hospital-specific errors in Washington state are no longer being made available to the public, after the state sided with the hospital association in interpreting a 2006 law on quality improvement.

The following is a summary of legislation by state regarding the disclosure by hospitals of their hospital infection rates.

Arkansas

As reported in HealthDecisions.org: Health Plan, Premera Blue Cross, has taken a major step forward in the move towards cost tranparency with the launch of its 'Out of Pocket Estimator' to hospitals in Washington. For the first time, an estimate of the patient’s portion of the hospital bill will be routinely available to consumers before they check in to the hospital through the use of this online tool. This tool enables hospitals (and later on, clinics) to provide an estimate to patients (Premera members in Washington) of their out of pocket costs for hospital services, based on their specific benefit package.