It turns out that the feds have finally decided to stop shelling out dollars to pay for the surgeries that fix the botched one from the first time around. What a novel idea!

According to the Arizona Republic, hospitals can no longer bill Medicare for these “second time’s a charm” surgeries where someone leaves an instrument inside or operates on the wrong appendage.

Instead, Medicare is trying to reward good outcomes, rather than covering the bad ones. While the verdict is still out on pay-for-performance, and certainly its ethics, it certainly seems to be good policy not to pay for hospitals to are careless and hurt patients. For that they should have to pick up their own bill, and hopefully learn from their mistakes.

Summer Johnson, PhD