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The federal government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services may stop paying hospitals for the extra care related to specific preventable medical errors such as an object left in a patient during surgery, hospital-acquired infections, or pressure ulcers according to a report in Manged Care Magazine. As chronicled in the report, the usual suspects are lining up for and against the proposed rule. The government, business, health plans and consumers support the proposed rule, while hospitals are saying that they are already struggling financially and will find it difficult to bear these new costs. “One study, reviewing 18 types of medical events, concluded that medical errors may account for 2.4 million extra hospital days, $9.3 billion in excess charges for all payers, including private plans, and 32,600 deaths in one year,” according to the report.

This is definitely an idea whose time has come and it could gain some serious political momentum. No one wants to bankrupt hospitals, but just like in most other value exchanges, no one wants to pay for mistakes either. The drive for health care accountability is getting palpable and for the right reasons.

A Harris poll just released estimates that about “160 million of the 225 million adults in the U.S. have looked online for information about their health, up 37% since 2005.” An amazing number but not really surprising giving the wholesale migration of public researching to the web. Now the Harris people call these folks, strangely enough, “cyberchondriacs”– which include most of us by the way. This clever in-house word-play is not to imply anything “negative” according to Harris, but it does make you wonder a bit about the subtle associations and attitudes lurking in the intellectual backwaters of those who channel our every opinion for mass consumption.

Snowmass, Colorado — Wall Street Journal health blogger, Laura Landro, also took notice of this year’s meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (see my previous post). Some excerpts from her post:

“Wilderness-medicine experts are the swashbucklers of health care, often emergency physicians who take time from hospital practices to accompany expeditions, run clinics at Everest base camp and work with ski-patrol rescue teams, often without pay.

But wilderness-medicine experts also treat Sherpas and other local workers on climbs and treks, and provide care to inhabitants of less-developed countries where they conduct research into animal- and insect-transmitted diseases, snake bites and toxic plants.

Such experts are also working with disaster-preparedness groups and the military on helping victims of natural disasters or combat casualties. They can convey an arsenal of improvisational techniques for use in locations far from modern facilities — such as tying scalp lacerations with a victim’s hair and dental floss, using a kayak paddle to make a splint, or immobilizing a neck injury with a fanny pack and duct tape.”

Here’s another study on the adoption of electronic medical records, of which the question should be asked, “Is this the best we can do?”

In a previous post I pointed to a Kaiser Foundation study that showed an American public that is more than ready for physicians to enter the digital age by investing in electronic medical records. In an EMR pilot project for the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it was reported that their best results in promoting EMRs was at most 31 percent.

Now, thanks to a UPI press report, we learn of a Millennium Research Group study that estimates the “nearly 18% of physicians had an electronic medical record (EMR) system in 2006 and that number is expected to rise to over 30% by 2011.”

By 2011? Given the importance that EMRs play in the evolution many advances we want to see achieved in the health care delivery system, and once again with these kind of relatively weak numbers, one simply has to asked, “are we doing enough?”

From the Millennium study,

“Health information technology is becoming increasingly popular in physician practices because of the growing awareness of the benefits it offers. Government initiatives allowing hospitals to assist their affiliated physicians by donating an EMR system or subsidizing the cost of software, will also fuel demand for EMR systems through 2011. Nevertheless, most non-hospital-affiliated small practices, which represented nearly 70% of all office-based physicians in 2006, will find it difficult to bear the costs of a new purchase and justify the disruption that the implementation process will cause the practice.”