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.

AHA News Reports: Tennessee Hospitals Announce Payment Policy for Certain Adverse Events

The Tennessee Hospital Association has approved a policy recommending hospitals in the state not to seek payment for care related to certain serious adverse events- if the hospital deems the event was preventable.

As previously blogged, starting in April, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee were to make physician quality and cost data available online, incorporating practices such as disclosing how doctors are ranked and providing them a way to appeal incorrect ratings, in line with a model that New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo created last year.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee customers will soon be able to review doctor's quality of care and costs on a private BCBS members-only Web site.

Physicians will review the data 60 days vefore it is made available to consumers, and will be able to dispute findings.

The report will be based on claims data, although BCBS intends to ask doctors to provide medical record data at some point in the future.

Starting in April, people insured by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee will soon be able to compare doctors on quality of care and costs, part of a broader push to give consumers enough information to make wise choices on medical treatment, report The Tennessean.

Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) in Tennessee has commenced posting their quality scores to their Web site (www.msha.com)- making public their safety and performance information compared to national and state averages.

Quality scores are available for each MSHA hospital providing care for Heart Attack, Heart Failure, Pneumonia and Surgery. The Web site will be updating each month and additional safety measures will be added in near future.

AHA News reports that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will solicit home health agencies in seven states to participate in a two-year pay-for-performance demonstration to begin in January. The states are Alabama, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts and Tennessee.

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

Arkansas

Following on the transparency trend among health plans, HealthDecisions.org reports that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has kicked off a program for enrollees that will let them know ahead of time what they will owe for physician visits. The program affects only the roughly 64,000 of the plan's 1.2 million Tennessee members who are currently enrolled in its consumer-driven health plan.

AHA News reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened to all U.S. hospitals its Web-based network for tracking healthcare-associated infections. It said the National Healthcare Safety Network has been improved to meet the needs of states with mandatory reporting of HAIs, and that eight states (California, Colorado, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia) plan to use the network in implementing mandatory reporting. CDC said the secured network allows hospitals to analyze the data and share it within a facility or with the general public if desired.

Tennessee joins the ranks of states now publishing hospital charges. Via the Tennessee Hospital Association, consumers can now browse average proices at most of the state's hospitals. The new Web site is called Tennessee Hospitals Inform. HCA hospitals are listed elsehwere.