Medicare Nonpayment, Hospital Falls, and Unintended Consequences

In 2005, in response to disturbing and widely cited findings by the Institute of Medicine about the prevalence of life-threatening conditions acquired by patients in U.S. hospitals, Congress authorized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement payment changes designed to encourage the prevention of such conditions. Under an amendment to the Social Security Act that was enacted on January 1, 2007, the secretary of Health and Human Services was required to identify at least two hospital-acquired conditions by October 1, 2007, that were high-cost, high-volume, or both; that resulted in the assignment of a case to a . . .