Hospitals Earn More For Mistakes Than For Flawless Surgeries
Surgery U.S. Department of DefenseWhy health care reform must include changes to how people pay for hospital care Hospitals make more money when they make mistakes during surgery, and reducing mistakes could actually cut into a hospital's profits, according to a new study. The study's authors suggest that changing the way people pay for hospital care could reduce complications, while maintaining the status quo could keep hospitals from trying to improve. On average, a surgery with complication netted a hospital $1,749 more for every patient on Medicare, or $39,017 more for a patient with private insurance, compared to a complication-free procedure. The study doesn't mean that surgeons deliberately make mistakes to rake in the dough for hospitals, David Sadoff, one of the study's authors and a managing director at the Boston Consulting Group, told The New York Times. "We don't believe that is happening at all," he said. But it does...