“Never Events” Spur Medical Device Innovation

Wherever you side in the contentious debate about the Affordable Care Act, there are aspects of it upon which everyone ought to agree. It uses financial incentives to encourage hospitals to adopt patient safety measures so they’ll avoid leaving surgical instruments in patients or operating on the wrong limb. It carries on the work done by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which in 2008 began a policy of not reimbursing for care related to certain events on a list of 29 “never events” created by the National Quality Forum, a list that has lengthened since 2008 and been carried over from Medicare to Medicaid patients. (See Exhibit 1.)