The news on bed sores is not good.
Hospital admissions increased by 15 percent between 1993 and 2006. The incidence of bed sores however, disproportionally jumped 79 percent.
Of course, Medicare wasted no time in making advanced bed sores a so-called “never” event, despite the fact there are no studies that guarantee total prevention.
In 2006 alone, over half a million patients developed bed sores associated with a hospital stay. The rising number of frail and elderly patients being admitted does not bode well for both the future of bed sore statistics, and the hospitals who are denied payment for treating these patients.
Related posts:
- Laborists, and how rising malpractice premiums and the physician payment system are fueling the rise of hospital-only obstetricians
- Bed sores: Result of poor care?
- Temporary doctors, and the economic factors leading to their rise
- Medicare ceases to pay for medical errors
- A lawyer on Medicare error P4P
- Why hospitalized Medicare patients get re-admitted so frequently
- Finding a doctor who accepts Medicare
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{ 5 comments }
That’s because you have some health care workers who are not moving the “immobile” on a daily basis for circulation.
daily basis, are you high?, you think that moving people once a day is enough, try 2 x a hour is probably what’s necessary or maybe 4x an hour and if you have a old immobile person, that’s not a one person job.
In my experience you’re more likely to get decent nursing and personal care in a nursing home than in a hospital.
If the end result of these no-pay events is that care is pushed to outpatient (run Granny over for those IV antibotics) homes I think many would benefit and few would suffer.
For all their advertising hype and fancy care centers hospitals are bad places for those too infirmed to demand decent care.
Not everyone has an unemployed or retired family member who can camp out and make sure their loved one isn’t totally ignored in between expensive “procedures”.
Anon 137,
You don’t get out to many nursing homes, do you?
Even the best are on a tight budget and, like the hospitals, could never afford the huge increase in staff that it would take to turn patients enough to prevent all bedsores.
137, are you joking? It’s like a battle to the death to see who can get a PICC line in first so Granny can get out of the hospital to a SNF. There is no hospital attending that wants someone getting long term vanc on their service sitting around waiting for the inevitable PE, pneumonia, or whatever other delightful surprise awaits.
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